Features:

A Good Match for Thermoelectrics

Junqiao Wu of the Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division used NERSC'S Franklin supercomputer to demonstrate that the introduction of oxygen atoms to the semiconductor zinc selenide will produce a “highly mismatched alloy” whose thermoelectric performance is substantially enhanced with no loss of electric conductivity. Thermoelectrics are promising for green energy production. More>

Algorithm Navigates Inside Chemical Labyrinth

James Sethian and Maciej Haranczyk, of the Computational Research Division (CRD), have developed a "molecular worm" algorithm that makes it easier and faster to simulate the passage of a molecule through the labyrinth of a chemical system. Such progressions are critical to catalysis and other important chemical processes. More>

Reaching for the Stars to Create Cosmic Music

Keith Jackson of CRD's Advanced Computing for Science Department teamed up with Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist George Smoot and Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart to "sonify" the universe. More>

ESnet Completes Implementation of DNS Security

The Department of Energy has finished implementing Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) to its high-performance Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) using a commercial appliance to digitally sign Domain Name System records and manage cryptographic keys. The signed records were published ahead of a mandate requiring government networks outside of the .gov domain to do so. More>

Cecilia Aragon Receives PECASE Award from President Obama

This month, Cecilia Aragon of CRD's Advanced Computing for Science Department accepted Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in the East Room of the White House. As announced last July, Aragon was among 100 researchers named by President Barrack Obama to receive the prestigious PECASE award, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on early-career researchers. More>

NewsBytes:

NEW to Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences Team

Introducing: Jerry Chou, Margie Wylie and Wendy Wolfson Tsabba. More>

ESnet Staff to Share Expertise at Joint Techs Meeting

ESnet projects and expertise will play a central role at the Winter 2010 Joint Techs meeting being held Jan. 31-Feb. 4 in Salt Lake City. The meeting, an international conference of network engineers, is being hosted by the University of Utah. More>

John Bell Named Co-Organize of AMS Von Neumann Symposium

John Bell, head of the Center for Computational Sciences and Engineering, and longtime collaborator Alejandro Garcia of San Jose State University have been selected as organizers of the 2011 von Neumann Symposium on “Multimodel and Multialgorithm Approaches to Multiscale Problems.” The symposium is sponsored by the American Mathematical Society and held every four years. The symposium will bring groups together in four key areas (fluids, solids, earth sciences, and molecular dynamics), and will enable applied mathematicians and scientists to discuss current practices and future research directions in the development of hybrid methodologies for multiscale phenomena. The AMS von Neumann Symposia are made possible by the generous support of a fund established by Dr. and Mrs. Carrol V. Newsom in honor of the memory of John von Neumann.

For more issues of Computing Sciences News, please click here. To receive e-mail updates from the Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences Communications Team, please subscribe to the RSS feed on our homepage or contact Linda Vu at lvu@lbl.gov.

To see where Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences stories have been mentioned in the news, click here.