Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - U.S. makes a Top 10 supercomputer available to anyone who can 'boost' America (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: The federal government is making one of the most powerful supercomputers in its computing arsenal available to any U.S. businesses that can help make the country more competitive. The system is the 5 petaflop Vulcan, an IBM Blue Gene/Q system running at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in Livermore, Calif. To qualify for system time a project must meet be able to establish that it can either: Boost American competitiveness, accelerate advances in science and technology, or develop the country's high-performance computing-skilled workforce.

Submission + - Gut Microbes Can Split a Species (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: The community of microbes in an animal's gut may be enough to turn the creature into a different species. Species usually split when their members become so genetically distinct--usually by living in separate environments that cause them to evolve different adaptations (think finches on different islands)--that they can no longer successfully breed with each other. Now researchers have shown that a couple groups of wasps have become new species not because their DNA has changed, but because the bacteria in their guts have changed--the first example of this type of speciation.

Submission + - Investigating the Dark Matter of Life

Submitted by aarondubrow
aarondubrow writes: Metagenomics makes it possible to investigate microbes in their natural environments and in the complex communities in which they normally live, but requires massive computing power. Researchers from the J. Craig Ventor Institute used the Ranger supercomputer at TACC to determine the bacterial and viral diversity of the Indian Ocean as part of the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition. They reported their results in PLOS One in October 2012. They are now applying a metagenomic approach to the human esophagus and the microbial imbalances there that may play a role in certain kinds of gastric acid reflux and esophageal cancer.

Submission + - Most Hotly Contested Articles (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by luehringf
luehringf writes: The BBC today has a story about and analysis by researchers at Oxford and 3 other institute that identified the most hotly contested Wikipedia articles. These are the articles where competing sets of editors constantly reverse each other changes. The BBC article says:

Articles about ex-US President George W Bush and anarchism are the most hotly contested on Wikipedia's English-language edition, research suggests.

Scientists analysed page edits in 10 editions to find topics fought over by contributors to the open encyclopaedia.

While some topics were locally controversial, many religious subjects, such as Jesus and God, were universally debated, they found.

Submission + - Sculpting Flow

Submitted by aarondubrow
aarondubrow writes: Researchers reported results in Nature Communications on a new way of sculpting tailor-made fluid flows by placing tiny pillars in microfluidic channels. The method could allow clinicians to better separate white blood cells in a sample, increase mixing in industrial applications, and more quickly perform lab-on-a-chip-type operation. Using the Ranger and Stampede supercomputers, the researchers ran more than 1,000 simulations representing combinations of speeds, thicknesses, heights or offsets that produce unique flows. This library of transformations will help the broader community design and use sculpted fluid flows.

Submission + - 16-Yr-Old Student Has Developed a Way to Turn Banana Peels Into Bioplastic (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by formaggio
formaggio writes: A sixteen-year-old Turkish student recently discovered that the starches and cellulose contained in a banana peel can also be used to create materials that insulate wires and form medical protheses. Bilgin developed a chemical process that turns the peels into a non-decaying bioplastic. She hopes that it will help replace the need for petroleum and combat pollution.

Submission + - D-Wave large-scale quantum chip validated (scienceblog.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A team of scientists says it has verified that quantum effects are indeed at work in the D-Wave processor, the first commercial quantum optimization computer processor. The team demonstrated that the D-Wave processor behaves in a manner that indicates that quantum mechanics has a functional role in the way it works. The demonstration involved a small subset of the chip’s 128 qubits, but in other words, the device appears to be operating as a quantum processor.

Submission + - Seismic Data Set Could Improve Earthquake Forecasting (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Geoscientists still can't predict when a major quake will strike, and many have given up trying. But many do try to issue more general forecasts of hazards and potential damage. This week, researchers added a potentially powerful new tool to their kit: the largest seismic database of its kind ever constructed, based on tens of thousands of earthquake records stretching back more than 1000 years. Together with a new global map of strain accumulation at plate boundaries, the data sets will form the core of an international public-private partnership intended to reshape the science of earthquake forecasting.

Submission + - "Shields to Maximum, Mr. Scott"

Submitted by aarondubrow
aarondubrow writes: Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin developed a fundamentally new way of simulating fabric impacts that captures the fragmentation of the projectiles and the shock response of the target. Running hundreds of simulations on supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, they assisted NASA in the development of ballistic limit curves that predict whether a shield will be perforated when hit by a projectile of a given size and speed. The framework they developed also allows them to study the impact of projectiles on body armor materials and to predict the response of different fabric weaves upon impact.

Submission + - MIT Researchers Can See Through Walls (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: MIT Professor Dina Katabi and graduate student Fadel Adib have developed a system they call Wi-Vi that uses Wi-Fi signals to visualize moving forms behind walls. How it works: 'Wi-Vi transmits two Wi-Fi signals, one of which is the inverse of the other. When one signal hits a stationary object, the other cancels it out. But because of the way the signals are encoded, they don't cancel each other out for moving objects. That makes the reflections from a moving person visible despite the wall between that person and the Wi-Vi device. Wi-Vi can translate those faint reflections into a real-time display of the person's movements.'

Submission + - The DNA Data Deluge (ieee.org)

Submitted by the_newsbeagle
the_newsbeagle writes: Fast, cheap genetic sequencing machines have the potential to revolutionize science and medicine--but only if geneticists can figure out how to deal with the floods of data their machines are producing. That's where computer scientists can save the day. In this article from IEEE Spectrum, two computational biologists explain how they're borrowing big data solutions from companies like Google and Amazon to meet the challenge.

An explanation of the scope of the problem, from the article: "The roughly 2000 sequencing instruments in labs and hospitals around the world can collectively generate about 15 petabytes of compressed genetic data each year. To put this into perspective, if you were to write this data onto standard DVDs, the resulting stack would be more than 2 miles tall. And with sequencing capacity increasing at a rate of around three- to fivefold per year, next year the stack would be around 6 to 10 miles tall. At this rate, within the next five years the stack of DVDs could reach higher than the orbit of the International Space Station."

Submission + - Cute Robots Will Be Launched Into Space (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: This summer, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to launch two amazingly cute yet advanced, white-helmeted robots into space. Then an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will attempt to converse with one of them. Robot astronaut Kirobo and backup robot Mirata were created as part of the Kibo Robot Project, a collaboration among Robo Garage, Toyota, the University of Tokyo and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA. They aim to send the robots with the JAXA mission to the ISS on Aug. 4.

Submission + - A Database of Brains

Submitted by aarondubrow
aarondubrow writes: Researchers recently created OpenfMRI, a web-based, supercomputer-powered tool that makes it easier for researchers to process, share, compare and rapidly analyze fMRI brain scans from many different studies. Applying supercomputing to the fMRI analysis allows researchers to conduct larger studies, test more hypotheses, and accommodate the growing spatial and time resolution of brain scans. The ultimate goal is to collect enough brain data to develop a bottom-up understanding of brain function.

Submission + - When Will My Computer Understand Me?

Submitted by aarondubrow
aarondubrow writes: For more than 50 years, linguists and computer scientists have tried to get computers to understand human language by programming semantics as software, with mixed results. Enabled by supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, University of Texas researchers are using new methods to more accurately represent language so computers can interpret it. Recently, they were awarded a grant from DARPA to combine distributional representation of word meanings with Markov logic networks to better capture the human understanding of language.

Submission + - Hip-Hip-Hadoop: Data Mining for Science

Submitted by aarondubrow
aarondubrow writes: In 2010, the Texas Advanced Computing Center began experimenting with Hadoop to test the technology's applicability for scientific problems. Researchers who are not C++ or Fortran programmers can quickly harness the power of Hadoop on the Longhorn remote visualization cluster to query massive collections and databases in new ways. Using TACC's Longhorn Hadoop system, researchers improved biomarker analysis, natural language processing and data mining of online health forums.

Slashdot Top Deals

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

Close