Top Stories:

The Breaking Points of Metallic Glasses

Using novel computational techniques developed by Christopher Rycroft of Berkeley Lab’s Computational Research Division (CRD), researchers now have a better idea about why metallic glass alloys, or liquid metals, made with a variety of techniques have wildly different toughness and breaking points. For the first time, these models are also in qualitative agreement with laboratory experiments. More>

Climate Change Study Strengthens
Link to Human Activities

New research shows some of the clearest evidence yet of a discernible human influence on atmospheric temperature. "We are far more certain of this finding than we are of the existence of the Higgs boson,” said the CRD's Michael Wehner, a study coauthor. Published online in the Nov. 29 early edition of the PNAS, the research compares data from climate models and satellite observations over a 33-year period. More>

Modeling Feat Sheds Light on Protein Channel's Function

Using supercomputers at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), chemists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have simulated the biological function of the sec translocon, which allows specific proteins to pass through membranes. The feat required bridging timescales from the realm of nanoseconds up to full minutes, exceeding earlier simulation efforts by more than six orders of magnitude. More>

NewsBytes:

New to Berkeley Lab Computing Sceinces

Introducing: Pradeep Mantha, Jessica Voytek and Roberto Vitillo. More>

ESnet5 Deployment Team Named as “Fierce” Innovators

The ESnet5 Deployment Team, charged with rolling out the 100 Gigabit per second national network that entered production in November, has been named to the first annual "Fierce 15" list of the top federal employees and teams who have done particularly innovative things. The list was announced Nov. 27 by Fierce Government, a newsletter covering the U.S. government. The list was compiled by Fierce Government staff who conducted interviews with government officials and industry to identify some of the most innovative projects and forward-thinking people working in government. More>

Globus Online and ESnet Partner for Scientific Data Management

Globus Online and ESnet are collaborating to help scientists better manage the growing amounts of data they need to move, share, and analyze worldwide. As partners, they plan to develop joint outreach programs designed for small and medium science collaborations that haven't used data transfer tools and advanced networking, but will soon require these capabilities as data volumes increase. The organizations will also pursue coordinated research efforts aimed at better integrating their services to make it easier for scientists to set up efficient end-to-end data transfers. More>

Phase 1 of Edison Arrives at NERSC

Phase 1 of NERSC's newest supercomputer, named Edison, was delivered on November 27, 2012. The architecture is a Cray XC30 ("Cascade") and it will be installed in two phases. When it is fully installed in 2013, Edison will have a peak performance of more than 2 petaflops (10¹⁵ floating point operations per second). The integrated storage system will have more than 6 petabytes of storage with an I/O bandwidth of 140 gigabytes per second. The system is named after U.S. inventor and businessman Thomas Alva Edision. More>

Berkeley Lab Staff Speak at Albany High's Annual Career Day

Computing Sciences staff members Dan Martin and Peter Nugent, and five other Berkeley Lab researchers discussed their work and career paths at Albany High School's annual Career Day on Wednesday, Nov. 14. Martin of CRD's Applied Numerical Algorithms Group talked about his work on BISICLES, a project to model the shrinking ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland. And Nugent of CRD's Computational Cosmology Center, talked about the search for supernovae and how they can be used to learn more about the universe. More>

Berkeley Lab Staff Contribute to SC12 Tech Program Sessions

Once again, scientists and engineers from Berkeley Lab made significant contributions to the SC12 Technical Program, sharing their expertise and experience with thousands of attendees at the annual conference sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and ACM SIGARCH. SC12 was held Nov. 10–16 in Salt Lake City, Utah. See the list of contributors. Berkeley Lab Deputy Director Horst Simon and CRD Future Technologies Group Lead Erich Strohmaier also celebrated 20 years of The Top500 List. Read more about how the list started.

ESnet's Inder Monga Presents at International Network Architects Workshop

Inder Monga, ESnet’s chief technologist, gave a presentation on software-defined networking at TERENA’s first Network Architects Workshop held Nov. 21-22 in Copenhagen. Software-defined networking, or SDN, is an emerging field in which software is used to automatically configure and control the various layers of the network to improve data transfers. ESnet has been conducting localized tests to demonstrate the value of SDN for production networking. The workshop, which was attended by 40 participants from 20 different organizations, provided a forum at which network designers and deployers shared their experiences and recommendations in building next-generation research and education networks. TERENA, which sponsored the workshop, is the Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association. More>

In the News:

Science News: Extremely Bad Weather

Daithi Stone, a staff scientist in CRD's Scientific Computing Group, was quoted in the Science Magazine article "Extremely Bad Weather" about the link between climate change and extreme weather events like droughts and super storms. More>

KFPA 94.1 (Terra Verde): Science of Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events

How can we know whether an extreme weather event is caused by climate change? What does the science say? How is it possible to evaluate what you hear in the news? Michael Wehner, a staff scientist in CRD's Scientific Computing Group, explains in this discussion. More>

TechZone360: ESnet's OSCARS Helps Pacific Wave Peering Facility Make Stronger Connections

The TechZone 360 news site reports that Pacific Wave, a network peering facility, is using the On-Demand Secure Circuits and Advanced Reservation System (OSCARS) developed by ESnet to dynamically provision circuits between users connecting via the international peering facility. Pacific Wave is a joint project of the Corporation for Education and Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP). OSCARS allows users to set up end-to-end network connections and reserve the necessary bandwidth for specified times. More>

Light Reading: Optical SDN Gets a Test Run

Light Reading reported that Infinera and ESnet completed a proof-of-concept demo of the Open Transport Switch (OTS)which brings the optical layer one step closer to fully joining the software-defined networking (SDN) trend. More>

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