Science Grid This Week

June 29, 2005

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Calendar/Meetings

June 2005

27-30, Global Grid Forum 14, Chicago, Illinois

July 2005

4-6, 13th GridPP Collaboration Meeting, Durham, UK

4-6, The 4th International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing, University of Lille, Lille, France

10-22, Third International Summer School on Grid Computing, Naples, Italy

11-15, Grid Summer Workshop 2005, South Padre Island, Texas

Full Calendar

Image of the Week

MonALISA monitoring of grid computing sites and network traffic. (Click on image for larger version.)
Courtesy MonALISA

The MonALISA (Monitoring Agents in A Large Integrated Services Architecture) framework is used to monitor many grid sites in the U.S., Europe and Asia. MonALISA provides complete information, in near real-time, about resource utilization and job execution. The framework also provides information about network traffic in major networks and connectivity between different grid sites.

Statistic of the Week

31.7 million
How big is a petabyte? If each letter of the alphabet represents one byte of information, and you write one letter every second for 31,710,000 years, you will create a document containing one petabyte (1x10¹⁵ bytes) of data.

PDF Version for Printing

RSS Headlines

Feature Story

Grid Technology Helps NEES Minimize Earthquake Damage

Rendering of the University of Minnesota's MAST facility.
Image Credit: Elif Dunay

Researchers across the country can now participate remotely in experiments designed to lessen the impact of earthquake and tsunami-related disasters, using grid computing technology and a network of earthquake engineering research facilities at fifteen universities.

Through the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, researchers can investigate long-span bridges at the University of Buffalo, the effects of tsunamis at Oregon State University, or the performance of structural components under multi-directional loads at the University of Minnesota. Through NEESit, the network's information technology infrastructure, and grid computing technology, collaborators can take part in experiments from remote locations, and access data uploaded to a central database. The public will soon get its first chance to watch an experiment at the Minnesota facility through a Web interface.

"At NEESit, we've established NEEScentral, a central portal for researchers, which includes access to a central data repository to store and retrieve all the video, audio and numeric data generated by earthquake engineering experiments," said Lelli Van Den Einde, Assistant Director for NEESit Operations at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. "We also develop telepresence and collaboration tools that allow distributed research teams to effectively plan and participate in projects remotely."

Telepresence involves streaming and synchronizing all types of data, so that key researchers can make informed decisions during an experiment even if they're sitting thousands of miles away. Teleobservation tools allow others, such as students and the public, to watch the experiments as they happen.

From the Editor

Due to the Fourth of July holiday, Science Grid This Week will not be published next Wednesday, July 6. SGTW will return Wednesday, July 13. Happy Fourth of July!

UltraLight Tutorial Teaches Grid and Networking Concepts

Students and instructors from Florida, California, Michigan and Brazil participated in the UltraLight Summer Tutorial, held June 8-10 in the Physics Learning Center at Florida International University. This year's workshop was hosted by Laird Kramer from the Center for High Energy Physics Education and Outreach at FIU. Recent advances in grid-based infrastructure and large-scale analysis of globally distributed data, and laying the groundwork for future collaborations were the main focuses of the 2005 tutorial.

Instructors from the fields of experimental physics and network engineering presented lectures during the morning sessions. During the afternoon laboratory sessions, students were able to apply the UltraLight interactive toolkit to the technology learned in the morning sessions. Following the tutorial, students will continue to work on research projects that will further immerse them in the material.