11/4/2010
Excerpts from Illinois in the News, a daily service provided by the University of Illinois News Bureau. This collection of November excerpts focuses on engineering topics and faculty contacted for their expertise by print and broadcast reporters around the world.
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Excerpts from Illinois in the News, a daily service provided by the University of Illinois News Bureau. This collection of November excerpts focuses on engineering topics and faculty contacted for their expertise by print and broadcast reporters around the world.
HEALTH
DailyTech (Chicago, Nov. 29) -- U. of I. researchers led by Stephen A. Boppart have created a tissue-imaging technique that is easy to read, accurate, quick and could eliminate the need for invasive biopsies. Also: Biomed Middle East (Dubai, Nov. 29), Photonics Online (Erie, Pa., Nov. 29)
BIOLOGY & PHYSICS
Technology Review (Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 22) -- In a paper written by U. of I. biophysicists Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese suggest that biologists need to think about their field in a radical new way: as a branch of condensed matter physics.
FASTEST COMPUTER
PC World (Sydney, Nov. 21) -- The Blue Waters computing system, which is being built at Illinois, will have the fastest cores “of its generation.” It also has the fastest memory infrastructure and fastest interconnect, “which means that data movement is much faster in the Blue Waters system than other systems of today – and actually (faster than) many of the systems that will be in place next year and the following years,” said William Kramer, the deputy director of the Blue Waters Project at the U. of I.’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications Also: Techworld (London, Nov. 21), San Diego Union-Tribune (Nov. 26).
EXPERT TESTIMONY
Greenwich Time (Connecticut, Nov. 19) -- U. of I. emeritus physicist Alan Nathan testified last week in a personal injury case and said that based upon his calculations, a backstop that was taller and set back farther would have prevented a Greenwich, Conn., man from being struck in the face by an overthrown softball during a recreational game.
EXASCALE COMPUTING
Network World (Framingham, Mass., Nov. 18) -- Exascale computing systems – a thousand times faster than petascale computers – could bolster climate research and improve the ability to respond to disasters such as the BP oil spill. Mother Nature doesn’t operate on a schedule set by governments and researchers, all the more reason to invest heavily in exascale today, says U. of I. computer science professor William Gropp. Also: IT World (Boston, Nov. 19), Techworld (London, Nov. 19).
MEASURING CELL MASS
Science Centric (Sofia, Bulgaria, Nov. 16) -- U. of I. researchers are using a new kind of microsensor to answer one of the weightiest questions in biology – the relationship between cell mass and growth rate. The team, led by electrical and computer engineering and bioengineering professor Rashid Bashir, published its results in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Also: AZoNano (Warriewood, Australia, Nov. 16), ChemInfo (Rockaway, N.J., Nov. 15), ECNmag (Dover, N.J., Nov. 15), Nanowerk News (Honolulu, Nov. 15), PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, Nov. 15), R&D Magazine (Rockaway, N.J., Nov. 16), Medical News Today (Nov. 17), Nanotechwire (Philadelphia, Nov. 16), TG Daily (Batavia, Ill., Nov. 25), Sify News (New Delhi, Nov. 25), United Press International (Nov. 24), Health Jockey (Maharashtra, India, Nov. 26), Gizmag (Nov. 26).
NUCLEAR ARSENALS
The Boston Globe (Nov. 16) -- Proponents of the New START arms treaty say the renewal of inspections is one of the best arguments for ratification. Not having the ability to inspect “will reduce our confidence in what we know about what’s going on in Russia,’’ said Clifford Singer, a U. of I. nuclear engineering professor and specialist in nuclear arsenals.
HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
The New York Times (Nov. 16) -- “The humanities and social sciences are the emerging domains for using high-performance computers,” said Peter Bajcsy, a research scientist at the U. of I.’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
WHO HAS THE WORLD'S FASTEST COMPUTER?
CBS News (Nov. 14) -- When the list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers is released Monday, the system run by the University of Tennessee will drop to No. 2 behind a system built by China’s National University of Defense Technology. “What the Chinese have done is they’re exploiting the power of GPUs (graphic processing unit) which are ... awfully close to being uniquely suited to this particular benchmark,” said Bill Gropp, a computer science professor at Illinois, which is building its own super-fast computing system--Blue Waters.
Related article:
PC World (San Francisco, Nov. 13) -- The U. of I.’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications is developing a system called Blue Waters, which will be capable of at least 1 petaflop of sustained performance, and up to 10 petaflops at peak performance.
ChemE FACULTY MEMBER HONORED
Genetic Engineering News & Biotechnology News (New Rochelle, N.Y., Nov. 11) -- The Federation of Materials Societies has awarded the 2010 National Materials Advancement Award to Richard Alkire, emeritus professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois, Also: PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, Nov. 11).
ELECTRON MOTION
PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, Nov. 10) -- The fastest “movies” ever made of electron motion have been captured by researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne and the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the U. of I. Also: AZoNano (Warriewood, Australia, Nov. 10), Nanowerk News (Honolulu, Nov. 10).
ASTROPHYSICS & BLUE WATERS
Photonics (Pittsfield, Mass., Nov. 10) -- Astrophysicists at Rochester Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University are tracing electromagnetic signatures using computer models. The RIT team will run the actual merger on its own computer, NewHorizons, and also will make use of other resources such as the Blue Waters computing system at Illinois.
POP RECOGNIZED WITH PECASE AWARD
News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Nov. 10) -- Electrical engineering Professor Eric Pop, who works in nanotechnology, computer memory and recycling waste energy to get more oomph from batteries, was named one of 85 researchers to earn Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers.
TEXTING AND DRIVING
KXAN-Channel 21 (NBC; Austin, Texas, Nov. 9) -- Sheldon Jacobson, a professor of computer science at Illinois, says not falling victim to an accident while texting and driving all depends on road density.
IMPLANTABLE LEDS
CNET News (San Francisco, Nov. 9) -- A team from the U. of I. has created tiny LED arrays that can be implanted beneath the skin to show the condition of wounds or deliver cancer-beating drugs.
THINKING ABOUT BLUE WATERS
Technology Review (Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 9) -- The Blue Waters computing system at Illinois will be unique in a number of ways. The first is that it will use the latest IBM Power chip, the Power 7. Even more essential to its performance will be the supercomputer’s new interconnect, which is the ultra fast network that allows all of the processor cores of the computer to communicate with one another.
VISUALIZING SPACE
RedOrbit (Dallas, Nov. 4) -- To help communicate the scientific promise of the James Webb Space Telescope researchers turned to the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at Illinois. Also: Chem Info (Rockaway, N.J., Nov. 3), HPCwire (San Diego, Nov. 3), International Space Fellowship (Brussels, Nov. 4), PhysOrg (Douglas, Isle of Man, Nov. 3), ScienceDaily (Chevy Chase, Md., Nov. 3), Softpedia (Bucharest, Romania, Nov. 4), Space Daily (Pasadena, Calif., Nov. 3).
COMBATING ILLNESS
Smartplanet (CBS Interactive; New York City, Nov. 4) -- Ian Brooks, a research scientist at NCSA at Illinois, talks about how a new biosurveillance program could help authorities develop better strategies for combating Illness outbreaks.
COMPUTER SPEED-UP
Chemical & Engineering News (Washington, D.C., Nov. 1) -- “Many people state that they can compute faster on GPUs (graphic processing units),” but they aren’t making proper comparisons, says Klaus Schulten, a biophysicist at Illinois. To get what Schulten considers to be an accurate speedup factor, he and his group recently ran some molecular dynamics calculations on a cluster named Lincoln at Illinois’ National Center for Supercomputing Applications. “We are opening the cabinet, adding GPUs, closing the cabinet, and running our program,” Schulten says.
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Contact: Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; 217/244-7716, editor.