Top Stories:

NERSC Helps Explain the Big Freeze

Scientists suspect that about 13,000 years ago, a catastrophic injection of freshwater into the North Atlantic "conveyor," which transports warm tropical water northward, triggered a major cold spell—known as the Younger Dryas or Big Freeze. But until recently, nobody could fully explain how the freshwater got there. Using supercomputers at NERSC, two researchers may have finally solved this mystery. More>

Can We Accurately Model Flow in Shale?

Shale is a sedimentary rock consisting of layered, fine-grained clay minerals and, often, organic matter such as kerogen, the source of oil and gas. Now, CRD researchers have developed a new mathematical model that incorporates kerogen in calculating how gas and oil become available and how long a reservoir is liable to keep producing. More>

Berkeley Lab Computer Scientists Develop Tools for Carbon Capture

Berkeley Lab computational scientists are playing key roles in the management of the Carbon Capture Storage Initiative (CCSI) project and development of the computational tools. CCSI is developing computational tools to help researchers design cost-efficient systems that will reduce the amount of CO2 emissions spewing from coal-fired power plants. More>

NewsBytes:

New to Berkeley Lab Computing Sceinces

Introducing: James Botts, Jaesik Choi, Eugene Vecharynski and Max Duarte Gonzalez. More>

Susan Lucas Named ESnet's Deputy Director for Operations

Susan Lucas has been named as the new Scientific Networking Division (SND) Deputy Director for Operations, SND and ESnet Director Greg Bell announced Jan. 6. Lucas worked at the Joint Genome Institute as head of the Production Department, as well as leader of the Strategic Planning, Operations, and Capabilities Group. More>

ESnet’s New Map Gives Up-to-the-Minute Network Data

A new interactive map developed by the Department of Energy’s ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) provides a detailed, up-to-the-minute look at the level of traffic traversing the various sections of the network as it connects 40 research sites around the country. ESnet is currently the world’s fastest coast-to-coast science network with a national backbone with 100 gigabit-per-second capability. More>

ESnet Named One of Top Government IT Innovators—Again

For the second time in four years, ESnet has been named one of the year’s top government IT innovators by InformationWeek Government magazine. In late 2012, the magazine announced its top 15 innovators in government IT, with ESnet cited for its new 100 gigabit-per-second nationwide network funded as the Advanced Networking Initiative and launched into full production in November 2012. More>

CRD Researchers Receive 2013 INCITE Allocations

Two researchers from the Computational Research Division are principal investigators and four are co-investigators on projects receiving large allocations of computer time in 2013 under DOE’s Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program. This year some 4.7 billion processing hours were awarded to 61 science and engineering projects with a high potential to accelerate innovation and discovery on some of the Department of Energy’s newest and most powerful supercomputers. More>

Boverhof's App Earns Honorable Mention in Amazon's Web Services Competition

The Turbine Gateway, an application developed by the CRD’s Joshua Boverhof for DOE’s Carbon Capture Simulation Initiative, recently earned honorable mention in a competition sponsored by Amazon Web Services (AWS). More>

CRD's Daniel Burke Elevated to IEEE Senior Member

Daniel Burke, who joined CRD last fall as a project manager for the new Computer Architecture Lab, has been elevated to the grade of Senior Member of the IEEE this year. Senior Member is the highest professional grade of the IEEE for which a member may apply and only about 8 percent of IEEE’s 416,000 members have achieved this level. More>

In the News:

Science: Death of a Star

The discovery of a nearby supernova by Berkeley Lab's Peter Nugent in August 2011 has brought astrophysicists closer to understanding a class of stellar explosions. Along with that success came an unexpected tragedy, as reported by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee in the January 4, 2013 issue of Science magazine. More>

HPCwire: Berkeley Lab Contemplates Stepping Stone to Exascale Supercomputer

NERSC at Berkeley Lab has recently begun installing Edison, the Cray supercomputer that will exceed two peak petaflops when its fully deployed in a couple of months. But the center is already prepping for its next-generation system, which is expected to be an order of magnitude more powerful. More>

SF Chronicle: Major Climate Changes Looming

Michael Wehner, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), is quoted in a San Francisco Chronicle story about the link between global warming and extreme weather events. More>

Ketcheson's Blog: Five Reasons Why You Should Submit Your Next Paper to CAMCoS

Communications in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science (CAMCoS), a journal co-founded and edited by CRD’s John Bell, is the focus of a recent blog written by David Ketcheson, an assistant professor of applied math and leader of the Numerical Mathematics Group at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. In addition to Bell, the CAMCoS taps the expertise of several other CRD mathematicians: Alexandre Chorin, Phil Colella and James Sethian also serve as editors. More>

Smithsonian Magazine: Top Five Surprising Scientific Milestones of 2012

Using supercomputers at NERSC, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) came up with a new approach for desalinating sea water using sheets of graphene, a one-atom-thick form of the element carbon. Team members say this method can be far more efficient and possibly less expensive than existing desalination systems. In December, Smithsonian Magazine named this result the fifth "Surprising Scientific Milestone of 2012." Read the NERSC story.

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