NEWS

The world’s largest digital library of 18th century printed books grows even larger for UK academic community
Released: 30 June 2009
Web link: www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2009/06/ecco.aspx
Following an agreement between JISC Collections and Gale, part of Cengage Learning, Part 2 of the ambitious digitisation project, Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), is now available free of charge to all UK academic institutions currently subscribing to ECCO. With 45,000 new titles selected from the English Short Title Catalogue, ECCO Part 2 adds close to seven million pages to the size of the collection - at no extra cost for subscribing institutions. The new collection includes 96 new editions of Shakespeare, a unique edition of Allan Ramsay’s ‘Above Nine Hundred Scots Proverbs’ (Glasgow, 1781, from the Bodleian Library) and a new author (Joseph Fox) with his ‘Parish Clerk’s vade mecum’ arising from his work as parish clerk at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. As with Part 1, ECCO Part 2 includes almost 13,000 titles from British Library’s extensive holdings of eighteenth-century material – new additions include ‘A Catalogue of Vocal and Instrumental Music’ engraved, printed and sold by James Blundell in 1781 and a unique copy of ‘The Fairing: or, a Golden Toy’, a small illustrated book for children. 

New supercomputer to reel in answers to some of earth’s problems
Released: 29 July 2009
Web link: www.innovationsreport.com /html/reports/earth_science/supercomputer_reel_answers_earth_039_s_problems_136822.html
EMSL’s Chinook supercomputer by HP commissioned for research. The newest supercomputer in town is almost 15 times faster than its predecessor and ready to take on problems in areas such as climate science, hydrogen
storage and molecular chemistry. The $21.4 million Chinook supercomputer was built by HP, tested by a variety of researchers, and has now been commissioned for use by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Department of Energy.

DARIAH Publishes First of Series of Major Studies of National Digital Infrastructure Development
Released: 14 July 2009
Web link: www.dariah.eu/
DARIAH is pleased to announce the publication of an in-depth study of the digital infrastructure for arts and humanities in Slovenia (http://www.dariah.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=76&Itemid=75).
This important analysis of an emergent infrastructure focuses on the development process itself; identifying individual initiatives, strategies, collaborations, and accomplishments, as well as the obstacles encountered. Painstakingly researched with a series of indepth interviews with researchers, infrastructure providers, and government representatives, the report maps all relevant recommendations, strategies, initiatives and key figures supporting and enabling the development of current and future policies in this area. The paper also includes a comparative component – considering developments in Slovenia within a European Union and wider international context. This study, along with several forthcoming national reports, is of interest to all those working towards the development of enhanced opportunities for collaborative and independent research in the arts and humanities. In particular, the focus on the construction and deployment of digital research infrastructures will provide examples and be a helpful guide to those working toward the building of an infrastructure within similar contexts.

Argonne develops program for cyber security “neighborhood watch”
Released: 21 July 2009
Web link: www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/information_technology/argonne_develops_program_cyber_security_039_136322.html
Cyber security team wins 2009 DOE innovation, technology achievement award. U.S. Department of Energy laboratories fight off millions of cyber attacks every year, but a near real-time dialog between these labs about this hostile activity has never existed – until now. Scientists at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory have devised a program that allows for Cyber Security defense systems to communicate when attacked and transmit that information to cyber systems at other institutions in the hopes of strengthening the overall cyber security posture of the complex.

First projects granted access to the PRACE Prototype systems - 4.4 Million Core hours to 3 projects
Released: 30 July 2009
Web link: www.prace-project.eu/news/first-projects-granted-access-to-the-prace-prototype-systems-4-4-millioncore-hours-to-3-projects
Three projects, two from Ireland and one from France, have been granted access to the PRACE prototype systems.
The purpose of this granting access is to enable future Tier-0 users to assess the prototypes and to prepare their applications for the Petaflop/s Infrastructure. The evaluation process has therefore focused on technical feasibility and the expected benefits both for PRACE and the users. The aim of this feasibility study by Niall English (University College Dublin) is to test new approaches in applying Carr35 Parrinello Molecular Dynamics (CP-MD) methods to simulate interfaces of biological systems with nanomaterials. In particular, the detailed mechanisms of protein and dye binding and adsorption to metal and metal oxide surfaces raise interesting and unresolved questions which only fully dynamic, electronic simulations by CP-MD methods can answer at the present time. More specifically, the goals of this feasibility study are to assess how these methods may be applied efficiently on PRACE-provided HPC architectures, in particular the IBM BlueGene/P at Jülich, Germany, the Cray XT5 at CSC/CSCS (Finland/Switzerland), and the Intel Nehalem cluster at CEA/Jülich (France/Germany). Code-scaling experiments up to 16.384 cores are planned. 

How networking is transforming healthcare
Released: 21 Jul 2009
Web link: www.networkworld.com/news/2009/072009-internet2-healthcare.html
The Obama Administration’s push towards health IT (http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/022609-obama-e-health-plan-health-it.html)-- including electronic health records and a nationwide health information
network -- has one important prerequisite: reliable, high-bandwidth Internet connectivity. Internet2 (http://www.internet2.edu/about/), a consortium of 200 U.S. universities, 70 corporations and 45 government agencies, has been applying advanced networking to medical research, education and clinical practice for several years. With its Health Network Initiative, Internet2 is underpinning the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Healthcare pilot program, which promotes the use of telehealth and telemedicine services nationwide. Mike McGill, program director for Internet2’s Health Sciences Initiative, talked with Network World’s Carolyn Duffy Marsan about how he believes gigabit-speed networks can transform the healthcare industry. Medical researchers, educators and clinicians are all looking to Internet2 to show them what is possible to do with a network in the medical environment. 

Newly Enhanced pSPerformance Toolkit Version Released
Released: 21 Jul 2009
Web link: mail.internet2.edu/wws/arc/i2-news/2009-07/msg00000.html
Easy To Install Suite of Tools Provides Performance Metrics, Monitoring and Diagnostics To Significantly Improve Users’ Network Experience Indianapolis, IN - July 21, 2009 – The perfSONAR-PS development team today announced at the ESCC/Internet2 Joint Techs Workshop, the release of an enhanced version of the pS-Performance Toolkit. The pS- Performance Toolkit (formerly called the pS-NetworkPerformance Toolkit) is available as a live CD download, which can be burned to disc and used to turn any Intel-based computer into an active network performance node. Based on feedback from early adopters, the latest release bundles the suite of recommended network performance tools in an easier-to-use package with new functionality. With these tools, researchers and network engineers can
not only monitor and debug their own networks, but access information from external networks.

CSIR technology supports access to government information and services in rural South Africa
Released: 09 Sept.2009
Web link: www.beliefproject.org/news/csir-technologysupports-access-to-government-information-and-services-in-rural-south-africa
The final pilot of project Lwazi (a Zulu word meaning knowledge or information) takes place on 11 September 2009 at the Thusong Service Centre in Atteridgeville, outside Pretoria. At the heart of this project, which facilitates access for all South Africans to government information and services, lies a winning combination of funding commitment
by the Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) and the skills of a group of researchers at the CSIR’s human language technologies (HLT) research group. The HLT research group is one of the research groups of the CSIR’s Meraka Institute.

Centre for High Performance Computing puts new supercomputer into operation
Released: 15 Sept. 2009
Web link: http://www.beliefproject.org
The Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) has launched phase 2 of its operations. The latest addition to its facilities is the Sun Microsystems hybrid supercomputer. The Minister of Science and Technology, Mrs Naledi Pandor, was the guest of honour at the launch event, which took place on 8 September 2009 at the CHPC in Rosebank, Cape Town. The event was hosted by the CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research).

EGI Council elected its chair
Released: 28 Sept.2009
Web link: www.eu-egi.eu
The EGI Council elected its chair on 24 September 2009, during the EGEE’09 conference in Barcelona, Spain. Per
Öster, representative of the Finnish National Grid Initiative (NGI), was chosen by the European Grid Initiative (EGI) Council members to lead the project’s governing body. This election constitutes another important step towards
the implementation of the EGI, which aims to establish a sustainable grid service for the European scientific communities. This will be achieved through the creation of a long-term, pan-European grid infrastructure.
A new legal entity (EGI.eu) is currently being established in Amsterdam, and will act as the coordinating body for
EGI. Its main role will be to facilitate the interaction and collaboration between the national grid infrastructures of the different participating countries. Together EGI.eu and the NGIs will operate and further develop the pan-European grid infrastructure, in order to guarantee its long-term availability for performing research and innovative work. The EGI Council, which is made up of NGIs as well as other members such as European institutions represented in the EIROforum will govern the direction of the EGI collaboration on a long term basis, and is therefore one of the key bodies in the EGI. Per Öster has been working since 2007 as Director of Application Services at CSC, the Finnish IT Center for Science.  He has been also actively involved in the EGI Design Study (EGI_DS), in which he has been responsible for the EGI promotion and links with other initiatives. In his statement to the Council members, Öster emphasised the importance of creating a working atmosphere based on trust and transparency, and setting up good working principles, in order that the Council can carry out its mission efficiently, and meet the future challenges. “In the next few months, important tasks await the EGI Council, including ensuring the success of the EGI proposal to the European Commission and establishing the EGI.eu organization”,
Öster said. “EGI is a fantastic opportunity not only for scientific collaboration but also to make the latest and most
advanced computing resources, applications, tools, and data available to all European researchers. It is a great honour to me to be able to contribute to it as chair of the EGI Council.