HPC Happenings
Adding MUSCLE to Multiscale Simulations. In memory of Mariusz Mamonski
HPCwire
Multiscale models help understand phenomena with a wider scope or an increased level of detail. These models allow us to take the best from multiple worlds, for example by combining models with a fine-grained time or space resolution with models that capture systems over a large baseline. Classical examples of multiscale modeling include coupling atomistic models to coarse-grained models, where several atoms are represented instead as a single fused particle, or coupling fine fluid dynamics models to coarser structural mechanics models. In both cases, we have a fairly good understanding of the single scale phenomena, but still have little knowledge of the interactions between these phenomena. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/2013/12/11/adding-muscle-multiscale-simulations/?goback=.gde_4178444_member_5816775986275983362#!.
HPC Conference Calls for Participation
Fourth NSF/TCPP Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Education (EduPar-14) – Call for Submissions
May 19, 2014 – Phoenix, Arizpma
Submission Deadline - January 21, 2013
In conjunction with 28th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium
Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) now permeates most computing activities. The pervasiveness of computing devices containing multicore CPUs and GPUs, including home and office PCs, laptops, and mobile devices, is making even common users dependent on parallel processing. Certainly, it is no longer sufficient for even basic programmers to acquire only the traditional sequential programming skills. The preceding trends point to the need for imparting a broad-based skill set in PDC technology at various levels in the educational fabric woven by Computer Science (CS) and Computer Engineering (CE) programs as well as related computational disciplines. However, the rapid changes in computing hardware platforms and devices, languages, supporting programming environments, and research advances, more than ever challenge educators in knowing what to include in the curriculum and what to teach in any given semester or course.
The 4th workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Education invites unpublished manuscripts from individuals or teams from academia, industry, and other educational and research institutes on topics pertaining to the teaching of PDC topics in the Computer Science and Engineering curriculum as well as in Computational Science and computational courses of STEM, Geoscience and other disciplines with PDC and high performance computing(HPC) concepts. The emphasis of the fourth workshop continues to be on the undergraduate education. The workshop especially seeks papers that report on experience with implementing aspects of the NSF/TCPP curriculum or other novel approaches to incorporating PDC topics into undergraduate core courses that are taken by the majority of students in a program. Methods, pedagogical approaches, tools, and techniques that have the potential for adoption across the broader community are of particular interest. For more information and submission guidelines, please visit http://cs.gsu.edu/~tcpp/curriculum/?q=edupar.
Call for Papers: Workshop on Clusters, Clouds and Grids for Health (CCGrid-Health 2014)
In conjunction with CCGrid 2014 - 14th IEEE/ACM International Symposium
May 26-29, 2014 – Chicago, Illinois
Paper Submission Deadline – February 1, 2014
Notification Date – February 28, 2014
Medical research is currently facing the Big Data wave. High resolution digital images, genomics data, and the vast amount of medical data resources on-line (medical reports, clinical tests, biology samples, large amounts of structured and unstructured text data...) lead to an unprecedented demand for large-scale data management and analysis. This workshop aims at bringing together developers of medical applications and researchers in the field of distributed IT systems. On the one hand, it addresses researchers who are already employing distributed infrastructure techniques in medical applications, in particular scientists developing data- and compute-intensive medical applications that include multi-data studies, large-scale parameter scans or complex analysis pipelines. On the other hand, it addresses computer scientists working in the field of distributed systems interested in bringing new developments into medical applications. For complete information and submission guidelines, please visit http://lsgc.org/ccgrid-health/.
Upcoming Conferences, Workshops and Webinars
Rice University 2014 Oil & Gas HPC Workshop
March 6, 2014 – Houston, Texas
The Oil and Gas HPC Workshop, hosted annually at Rice University, is a premier meeting place for engaging in discussion focused on high performance computing and computational science and engineering for the oil and gas industry. The program committee is pleased to invite you to participate in the 7th annual workshop and encourages you to submit abstract(s) for consideration for the technical program. For more information, please visit http://rice2014.og-hpc.org/?utm_source=Oil+%26+Gas+HPC+Workshop+Community&utm_campaign=6928632946-Rice_2013_OG_HPC_Call4Abstracts&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_59170dce43-6928632946-31504533..
Research Features From Across the Country and Around the World
University of Arizona Scientists Develop Computer Games to Keep Miners Safe
UA News
University of Arizona researchers are developing interactive computer games to train miners to avoid fatal accidents and potential emergencies while working in mines. "We're approaching it from a training standpoint of how can we best develop a tool that miners could use that would teach them to make appropriate decisions or see where wrong decisions have been made," says Arizona professor John R. M. Hill. The games enable miners to play various roles in different situations so they can learn to make decisions leading to alternate outcomes and can replay the games as many times as necessary to understand the potential consequences of each decision they make. "These interactive fatalgrams enhance the learning experience by pairing visual information with events leading to fatal incidents, to help miners understand the accidents and the need for relevant safety practices," says Arizona's Leonard D. Brown. To read further, please visit http://uanews.org/story/scientists-develop-computer-games-to-keep-miners-safe.
Supercomputing's Big Problem: What's After Silicon?
Computerworld
Experts say that as Moore's Law reaches its limits, new technologies must be developed for supercomputers to continue to advance. Researchers say today's supercomputer development can be compared to the advent of complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The arrival of CMOS was disruptive, but it led to an expansive age of computing. The problem is "we don't have a technology that is ready to be adopted as a replacement for CMOS," says University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor William Gropp. Next-generation technologies could come from innovative materials "that are not anywhere near silicon, like the carbon nanotubes (CNTs)," says Argonne National Laboratory researcher Peter Beckman. Stanford University researchers are developing CNT-based digital circuits in an attempt to build the first computer using CNTs. The Stanford researchers say they emulated the MIPS instruction set, resulting in 10x benefit in a metric that considers performance and energy. The researchers synthesized their nanotubes by taking a quartz wafer, adding iron nanoparticles, and then heating it to 1,652 degrees Fahrenheit. "I'm really interested in things like emerging technologies because I want to know if CNTs are going to be able to save us in time," Gropp says. To read further, please visit http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9244179/Supercomputing_s_big_problem_What_s_after_silicon_.
British Library Sets Out to Archive the Web
Associated Press
The British Library is archiving every British website and e-book in a monumental undertaking aimed at maintaining the country's digital memory for future researchers, regardless of technological change. With the rise in popularity of computers and mobile phones, future historians have been losing valuable material, such as firsthand accounts of the 2005 London transit bombings. "The average life of a Web page is only 75 days, because websites change, the contents get taken down," says the British Library's Lucie Burgess. "If we don't capture this material, a critical piece of the jigsaw puzzle of our understanding of the 21st century will be lost." Although the British Library has been archiving pieces of the Web for years and has collected about 10,000 sites, in the past it had to obtain permission from website owners to do so. A 2003 law changed the permission requirement, but legislative and technological issues have slowed the archiving project. To read further, please visit http://www.pddnet.com/news/2013/04/british-library-sets-out-archive-web.
Education Opportunities
Make Computer Science Count in YOUR State
Over 25 states have started petitions on Change.org about a topic that is of great importance to all of us: making Computer Science count. In these states, Computer Science either does not count towards existing graduation requirements OR does not count towards existing college admission requirements. We are trying to change that. As a Computer Science teacher, you know that CS develops students computational and critical thinking skills and teaches them how to create --not just use--new technologies. Additionally, by 2020, there will be 1 million more jobs than students in the United States. There is a chance to make a great difference in our K-12 education system! Please join me and sign the petition in your state to make Computer Science count. You can find your state's petition at https://www.change.org/campaigns/make-computer-science-courses-count-toward-graduation-credits.
TECH CORPS - Techie Club Aligns with CSTA Standards
The Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and TECH CORPS have released a new “crosswalk” document illustrating the extent to which TECH CORPS’ Techie Club program lessons incorporate the learning standards from the CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards into a fun, informal education experience that engages all students, especially those who are traditionally absent from computer science courses offered during school hours. Techie Club includes more than 40 hours of hands-on, interactive activities for 3rd – 6th grade students. The lessons focus on a variety of computing topics, promote 21st century skills and provide students with an awareness of technology-related careers. For more information, please visit http://csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/K12Standards.html or please contact Chris Stephenson at cstephenson@csta.acm.org.
STEM Education in the U.S. Needs Improvement
U-T San Diego
STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). The future of our innovation economy depends on the next generation’s skills in these fields. And America is not doing so well. Today, our K-12 students routinely receive low scores on international tests. For example, only 7 percent of U.S. students reached the advanced level in eighth-grade math, while 48 percent of eighth-graders in Singapore and 47 percent of eighth-graders in South Korea reached the advanced level, according to the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Study. To read further, please visit http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/dec/09/tp-stem-education-in-the-us-needs-improvement/.
Reducing Gender Bias in Job Descriptions
These tips provide “before and after” examples of ads with balanced language and other guidelines for writing unbiased job descriptions. View the NCWIT Checklist for Reducing Unconscious Bias in Job Descriptions/Advertisements by visiting https://www.ncwit.org/resources/ncwit-checklist-reducing-unconscious-bias-job-descriptionsadvertisements.
Carnegie Mellon Delving Into Digital Learning
Inside Higher Ed
Carnegie Mellon University announced its Simon Initiative, which will publicly launch the world’s largest student learning database to determine best practices and standards for the use of technology in the classroom. The university is forming a council of higher education leaders, education technology experts, and industry representatives to guide the initiative. The effort will build on the work of the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center and its research partners, as well as the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation, says CMU president Subra Suresh. The Simon Initiative has four main goals, which are to share rich data worldwide, assist teachers with teaching, speed innovation through startup companies, and improve residential students' educational experience. "Now is the right time to bring all this together in a new and unique way, and also tie it to developments all around the world," Suresh says. The Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center has gathered more than 500,000 hours of student data and studies on technology-enhanced courses, and wants to enable global researchers to contribute their own data and help create a common format that will improve data usability for scholars in all disciplines. "Advances in learning science and technology offer transformative potential in education and training nationwide," says U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Student Engagement and Information
Program Seeks to Nurture 'Data Science Culture' at Universities
New York Times \
Academia at New York University (NYU), the University of Washington, and the University of California, Berkeley are collaborating on the Sloan Foundation's five-year Digital Information Technology program. "What this partnership is trying to do is change the culture of universities to create a data science culture," says program director Joshua Greenberg. NYU professor Yann LeCun says the three-university collaboration aims to create a new data science environment. At each university, 12 to 15 professors will be the core participants representing the life, environmental, physical, and social sciences. Each campus also will have a data science studio staffed by data scientists and software professionals, where researchers from different disciplines will share ideas and techniques. The partnership is designed to be a demonstration project that other universities can emulate. To read further, please visit http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/program-seeks-to-nurture-data-science-culture-at-universities/?_r=0.
For Girls in STEM, Belonging, Not Brain Structure, Makes the Difference
This post is part of a series sponsored by Cisco and its partners promoting women in STEM.
Little real evidence is available to indicate that the brains of men and women are "hardwired" differently, yet; perhaps due to lingering stereotypes, women remain underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. In her book, Pink Brain, Blue Brain, Lise Eliot writes, "What I found, after an exhaustive search, was surprisingly little solid evidence of sex differences in children's brains." This appears to run contrary to common claims that women somehow are less adept at STEM, a conclusion that would seem to follow from their marked underrepresentation in university science and technology programs. TO READ FURTHER, PLEASE VISIT http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephanie-kelly/for-girls-in-stem-belongi_1_b_4394592.html
Howard E. Tompkins Scholarship
Application Deadline - Floating
This scholarship is normally awarded to a female junior Computer Science major who is doing excellent work in a Computer Science program. The scholarship amount varies, but is usually about $1,000. For more information, please visit http://www.iup.edu/page.aspx?id=25379.
Faculty Proposal News and Information
Exploiting Parallelism and Scalability (XPS)
Submission Window Date(s) (due by 5 p.m. proposer's local time): - February 10, 2014 - February 24, 2014
The Exploiting Parallelism and Scalability (XPS) program aims to support groundbreaking research leading to a new era of parallel computing. Achieving the needed breakthroughs will require a collaborative effort among researchers representing all areas-- from services and applications down to the micro-architecture-- and will be built on new concepts, theories, and foundational principles. New approaches to achieve scalable performance and usability need new abstract models and algorithms, new programming models and languages, new hardware architectures, compilers, operating systems and run-time systems, and must exploit domain and application-specific knowledge. Research is also needed on energy efficiency, communication efficiency, and on enabling the division of effort between edge devices and clouds. For more information and submission guidelines, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14516/nsf14516.htm?WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&WT.mc_ev=click
Should Universities Offer Cobol Classes?
Computerworld
There are billions of lines of Cobol code still in use at large businesses and in government agencies, and many experts say that will be the case for years. However, Cobol is only taught as an elective at most universities. Syracuse University professor David Dischiave wants students to emerge from college as critical thinkers with practical skills, including having experience with Cobol. "Employers are knocking on our door trying to hire as many [Cobol-trained students] as they can," Dischiave says. A recent Micro Focus survey of 119 universities found that 73 percent do not offer Cobol programming as part of their curriculum, 18 percent have Cobol as a core part of the curriculum, and 9 percent offer Cobol as an elective. To read further, please visit http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238194/Should_universities_offer_Cobol_classes_.
On the Lighter Side – Computational Science News on the Edge
Ads Could Soon Know If You're an Introvert (on Twitter)
Technology Review
IBM researchers are testing technology that guesses people's core psychological traits by analyzing what they post on Twitter, with the goal of offering personalized customer service or better-targeted promotional messages. The researchers have developed software that creates a personality profile based on a person's most recent few hundred or thousand Twitter updates. They are working with several IBM customers to test how the technology might help their businesses. The pilot program will test whether messages targeted with the technology's help perform better than others. "Our hypothesis is that the conversion rates will be quite high," says IBM researcher Michelle Zhou. Having a general idea of a person's personality could help in call centers or other customer service settings, such as when an airline must report that a flight has been cancelled or delayed. The software was developed by recruiting people to answer psychological questionnaires and comparing the results with their Twitter activity. In a study in which 300 people had their Twitter profiles processed by the software and also took psychometric surveys, the results were "highly correlated" more than 80 percent of the time, Zhou says. However, she notes that when Twitter is used for specialized purposes it can distort results. To read further, please visit http://www.technologyreview.com/news/520671/ads-could-soon-know-if-youre-an-introvert-on-twitter/.
Baseball Meets Internet of Things: Goodbye, Bad Umpires?
InformationWeek
Researchers at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) are using the concept of the Internet of things to enhance sporting events. For example, connected baseball equipment, in combination with sensors and transmitters located through a stadium, could deliver much more precise verdicts for frequently contested situations such as foul balls, stolen bases, and border-line pitches. The researchers say the technology should be accurate to an extent that human observers, such as umpires, cannot equal. Sensors also could be used to improve techniques during training. For example, connected bats could measure anything from a player's posture to his swing speed to how firmly he grips the bat. When this information is combined with the corresponding big data algorithms, the measurements could pinpoint small imperfections in a player's form and lead to more effective training strategies. To read further, please visit http://www.informationweek.com/desktop/baseball-meets-internet-of-things-bye-bad-umpires/d/d-id/1109430?.
Tiny Technology Could Spark Revolution in House Buying
Plymouth University
A near-field communication (NFC) tag developed at Plymouth University could facilitate the home-buying process. The researchers say the tiny tag can be placed discreetly near the entrance of a property, and prospective buyers would touch it with their smartphone to access information on the house. Prospective buyers must register with the real estate agent to get NFC Homes, the free app needed to access the property information. "This app solves the age-old problem of how do you put your house on the market without broadcasting the fact to all of your neighbors," says Plymouth professor Martin Tomlinson, who developed the technology. "It is easy to use, with the added bonus of reducing clutter in our towns and countryside." The data stored on the tag is encrypted, and is limited to those who sign up for the app. To read further, please visit http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/pages/view.asp?page=40039..
It’s Official: Computer Scientists Pick Stronger Passwords
Ars Technica
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers examined the passwords that 25,000 faculty, staff, and students used to access grades, email, financial transcripts, and other sensitive data, and then analyzed how guessable the passwords would be during an offline attack. The researchers subjected the passwords to a cracking algorithm with a complex password policy, and found differences in the quality of the passwords chosen by various subgroups within the university population. For example, those associated with CMU's computer science and technology schools chose passwords that were more than 1.8 times stronger than those used by people in the business school. "This kind of experiment can't tell us anything about why this effect is going on, just that it is," says CMU's Michelle L. Mazurek. The researchers also found that with the addition of each lowercase letter or digit, a password is 70 percent as likely to be guessed. Adding special symbols or uppercase letters strengthened passwords even more, lowering the likelihood of guessing to 56 percent and 46 percent, respectively. Men in the study also used slightly stronger passwords than women, while people who choose stronger passwords have higher rates of failed login attempts. The researchers presented their study at the recent ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Berlin. To read further, please visit http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/its-official-computer-scientists-pick-stronger-passwords/
