477180
submission
Weather Storm writes:
DOE's Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program, which supports computationally intensive, large-scale research projects, awarded 265 million processor-hours to 55 scientific projects, the largest amount of supercomputing resource awards donated in the DOE's history and three times that of last year's award. The projects-with applications from aeronautics to astrophysics, and from climate change to combustion research-were chosen based on their potential breakthroughs in the science and engineering research and their suitability of the project for using supercomputers. This year's INCITE applications ranged from developing nanomaterials to advancing the nation's basic understanding of physics and chemistry, and from designing quieter cars to improving commercial aircraft design. The next round of the INCITE competition will be announced this summer. Expansion of the DOE Office of Science's computational capabilities should approximately quadruple the 2009 INCITE award allocations to close to a billion processor hours.
477108
submission
Weather Storm writes:
Information week has a story on Wal-Mart's push for suppliers to RFID tag their product shipments to it's Sam's Club distrubition center in Texas.
Wal-Mart is apparently tired of its investments in radio frequency identification turning into a prolonged pilot study and is stepping up pressure on suppliers to comply with its 3-year-old inventory-technology mandate. The retailer says that beginning Jan. 30, it will charge suppliers a $2 fee for each pallet they ship to its Sam's Club distribution center in Texas that doesn't have an RFID tag. The retailer hasn't taken such a strong-arm approach yet with the more than 15,000 suppliers that still haven't complied with its request to tag pallets and cases headed for its Wal-Mart stores. Instead, it seems focused on turning its 700-store Sam's Club warehouse-outlet division into an example of RFID supply chain technology in action, down to requiring item-level RFID in 22 distribution centers by 2010. The division contributed $41.5 billion to Wal-Mart's $344.9 billion in revenue for its 2007 fiscal year.
476330
submission
Weather Storm writes:
According to MSNBC.com, the FCC will try again to test prototypes on Jan. 24 for transmitting high-speed Internet service over unused television airwaves. The devices developed by Adaptrum Inc., Microsoft Corp., Motorola Inc. and Philips Electronics North America Corp. will be tested in laboratory and real-world conditions for three months. Last year, a high-technology coalition — which includes Microsoft, Google Inc., Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp. among others — submitted prototypes they said could transmit broadband Internet service over unlicensed and unused TV spectrum, known as "white spaces." Television broadcasters and the wireless microphone industry say such devices could interfere with programming. The Initial prototype testing failed last July because the devices did not reliably detect and avoid TV programming signals and could have caused interference. If the tests are successful this time and the devices are approved, the coalition plans to introduce commercial devices for sale after the digital television transition in February 2009.
476306
submission
Weather Storm writes:
Weather information from thousands of personal weather stations are being used for weather forecasting by several private and government agencies including National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Department of Homeland Security (DOH). Citizens Weather Observation Program (CWOP) created by a few amateur radio operators experimenting with transmitting weather data with packet radios, has expanded their network to include internet only weather stations. "As of September 2007, nearly 5,000 station world-wide reported weather data regularly to CWOP a href="http://www.findu.com/">FindU database." The weather data is forwarded every 15 minutes to NOAA's Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS), checked for temporary and spatial consistency, than utilized by computer forecast models and internal forecast verification programs. In a Febuary 2007 report, DOH listed CWOP as a national assets to the "BioWatch" Network stating that data from personal weather station could be useful in weather forecasts for hazardous releases. In 2007, the FindU server received 422,262,687 weather reports which is a 29.5% increase over 2006.
