| Contents September 2006 |
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| Industry
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HPCN industry |
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| "The THIRD-BRAIN: The Next Generation of Supercomputer Design Beyond PetaFlop/s" - an interview with Steve Chen |
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One of the prominent speakers in Dresden at the ISC2006 Supercomputer Conference was Dr. Steve Chen. Steve Chen designed some of the very successful early Cray Supercomputers in the US. In the recent years, he designed the SuperBlade systems for the Chinese company, Galactic Computing. But it does not stop there. While everybody else is looking ahead to the first Petaflop/s systems, perhaps next year, Steve Chen is already one step further. His new design, called theTHIRD-BRAINis an architecture far beyond the Petaflop/s system. Emulating and augmenting the real Human Brain, the design draws from a number of disciplines and incorporates this in an innovative approach. In parallel to designing Supercomputers, Steve Chen is also very active in developing leading-edge applications in China. He is working on a project of putting many HPC systems in the different Chinese states and linking them together as a large and highly efficientIntegral Utility Supercomputing Grid (IUGS) or Integral Grid. The Grid Supercomputers will be made available as a commercial service on the Internet, allowing highly productive, real-time, interactive and collaborative enterprise or personal applications in science, engineering, commerce, telecommunication, healthcare, education, media, financial and logistics. The pervasive use of Grid Supercomputers could bring China to the forefront of Supercomputer applications in five years from now. Currently, Steve Chen is also leading twoIntegral Gridtrial projects delivering services in "digital hospital and healthcare” and "Third-Brain driven learning engine" to underdeveloped rural and farming areas in China.
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| Cray wins $52 million supercomputer contract with National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center |
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Cray has won the contract to install a next-generation supercomputer at the DOE's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). The systems and multi-year services contract, valued at over $52 million, includes delivery of a Cray massively parallel processor supercomputer, code-named "Hood".
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| PoochMPI Toolkit for Mathematica |
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Dauger Research, and Advanced Cluster Systems did announce the PoochMPI Toolkit for Mathematica, enabling Wolfram Research's Mathematica to be combined with the easy-to-use, supercomputer-compatible Pooch clustering technology of Dauger Research. This new technology, as Pooch as done before, will further enhance the power of clusters for its users.
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| Linux Networx and Scali partner to power supercomputing price/performance |
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Scali, specialized in Linux clustering software, and Linux Networx have signed a partnership to bundle Scali MPI Connect with Linux Networx Supersystems. Linux Networx supercomputing architects and the Scali performance team are performance-optimizing Linux Supersystems to power popular industry applications and custom codes. Early benchmarks show more than 3X increases in total application throughput in custom codes with greater than 20% improvement in industrial applications.
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| Microsoft brings high-performance computing for the automotive industry |
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In a white paper released today at the Center for Automotive Research’s Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City, Mich., experts from Microsoft Corp. and the HPC sector offered predictions regarding the way HPC will be used with the availability of compute clusters — a collection of small servers that can be accessed from desktop or laptop computers. According to the white paper “Desk-Side Supercomputing,” this technology has the potential to slash the total cost of ownership to just a few thousand dollars, enables engineers to get results in a fraction of the time previously required, and helps products get to market more quickly.
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| EELA gets ready for its 1st Conference |
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The 1st EELA Conference will be held at the Technical University Federico Santa María (UTFSM) in Santiago (Chile) on the 4th and 5th of September 2006. This major EELA event will precede the 5th EELA Tutorial for Grid users (6th-7th of September, REUNA building, Santiago) and the 1st National e-Science Congress, organized by REUNA (6th-7th of September).
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| Liquid Computing appoints vice-president of sales |
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Liquid Computing, a developer of a new class of scalable computing system, has appointed Bob DeMartino as head of its worldwide sales force. Mr. DeMartino brings over 20 years of sales and market development experience with both large, established enterprise and start-up technology firms.
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| ORNL Jaguar supercomputer surpasses 50 teraflops |
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An upgrade to the Cray XT3 supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has increased the system's computing power to 54 teraflops, or 54 trillion mathematical calculations per second, making the Cray among the most powerful open scientific systems in the world.
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| Cray reports 2006 second quarter financial results |
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Cray Inc. has announced financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2006. Total revenue for the quarter was $38.5 million compared to $53.4 million in the same period of the prior year. Net loss for the quarter improved year-over-year to ($7.2 million) or ($0.32) per share compared to ($23.8 million) or ($1.08) per share in the second quarter of 2005. Cray reported total gross margin of 32.5 percent for the second quarter of 2006, a significant improvement compared to 8.8 percent in the prior year period. Product margin, which improved to 26.6 percent, was the principal driver. Service gross margin of 43.0 percent for the quarter was in line with the prior year.
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| Appro announces support for the new dual-core Intel Xeon processor 5100 series for all platforms |
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Appro has introduced support for the new Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor-based HyperBlade server and 1U and 2U HyperServers. Appro servers based on the new Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor (formerly codenamed 'Woodcrest'); provide outstanding performance and reliability for a broad range of enterprise and technical computing applications.
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| Intel ESAA Programme certifies SilverStorm Technologies' interconnects for its HPC solution offering |
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SilverStorm Technologies, specialized in high performance interconnect solutions for clustered computing, has launched the second release of its High Performance Computing (HPC) recipe documentation to support the Intel Enabled Server Acceleration Alliance (Intel ESAA) programme. The new SilverStorm cluster computing interconnect recipes focus on HPC solutions that are fully configured, tested, and supported by SilverStorm and its partners. Intel will distribute the recipes to Intel's global ESAA programme OEM channel partners, who will market and sell the supported solutions to end user customers.
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| UCSD's supercomputer helps Palomar share its cosmic discoveries |
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AE-PR-09-06-35Combining computer and communications skills, experts at the University of California San Diego are helping colleagues at the California Institute of Technology share the massive amounts of data produced by astronomers’ investigations of the cosmos.
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| HP ranked no. 1 in worldwide distributed system management software market share |
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Market research firm IDC has ranked HP as the worldwide market share leader in distributed system management software for 2005. According to the IDC study, HP led the worldwide distributed system management software market category for the third consecutive year with a 14.5 percent market share for 2005.
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| Appro introduces new XtremeServers based on Next-Generation AMD Opteron processors |
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Appro, a provider of high-performance enterprise computing systems, plans to unveil its new XtremeServers based on Next-Generation AMD Opteron processors at LinuxWorld Show, San Francisco Moscone Convention Center. The servers will be available beginning late August 2006.
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| The Portland Group delivers PGI 6.2 compilers and development tools for high-performance computing |
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The Portland Group (PGI) will make available version 6.2 of its PGI C/C++ and Fortran compilers and development tools on August 24, 2006. The latest release of the PGI Workstation compilers adds native support for 32-bit Windows platforms to an existing tool suite that already supports 64-bit Windows and is the reference standard on both 32-bit and 64-bit Linux systems.
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| Cornell Theory Center designs new informatics system for NYS's largest health care network |
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Cornell Theory Center (CTC) helped design and create a new high-performance computing centre and informatics system for the Biorepository at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research.
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| Indiana University's new supercomputer goes to work |
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Indiana University (IU) officials and other dignitaries have cut the ribbon and kicked off the first production programme on Big Red, the fastest academic supercomputer in the United States, on Tuesday on Augustus 22. The ceremony was held at IU Bloomington's Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Facility at the Wrubel Computing Center, which is located at 2711 E. 10th Street.
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| Volume servers to lead worldwide server market to modest growth in second quarter, according to IDC |
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According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, factory revenue in the worldwide server market grew at 0.6% year over year to $12.3 billion in the second quarter of 2006, marking a return to positive overall revenue growth for the first time since the third quarter of last year. Demand in the U.S. and Asia/Pacific, excluding Japan, led to positive results in these markets, with year-over-year growth of 3.6% and 2.6% respectively, while weaker results in EMEA and Japan brought down the overall growth rate.
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| Florida Atlantic University purchases SGI technology to establish South Florida's first Center for High Performance Computing |
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To establish South Florida's first Center for High Performance Computing, Florida Atlantic University (FAU) selected high-performance compute and storage systems from Silicon Graphics. FAU, with six campuses in Broward, Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties, will open the Center at FAU Boca Raton.
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| IBM invests in the delivery of SAP® applications on System z mainframe |
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IBM intends to invest up to $40 million over the next five years to test, enable and support SAP® applications on System z solutions, and to enhance existing SAP technical centres. This ongoing investment in IBM System z Technology Centers for SAP Applications in Germany and the U.S. enables a strong technical relationship between IBM and SAP that continues to be dedicated to the delivery and deployment of SAP® applications on System z.
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| Appro announces collaboration with Fluent to help enterprise customers visualize data centre cooling |
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Appro has teamed with Fluent to help IT managers address data centre cooling issues. Enterprises in financial services, electronics design, industrial engineering and oil and gas industries, demand increased server and network performance and scalability while at the same time striving to dramatically reduce IT costs and minimize risk.
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| Open source Linux cluster management with SGI Propack 5 |
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SGI introduced ProPack 5. SGI ProPack 5 will be offered as an optional enhancement to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Novell.
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| IBM unveils development roadmap and business strategy for open source beyond Linux |
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Building upon the company's commitment to help clients transform businesses, IBM has rolled out its next generation blueprint and roadmap to advance key Linux development priorities and support for open source business models. With the announcement, IBM unveiled eight key open source initiatives beyond Linux, aimed at accelerating the adoption of open standards and extending existing product lines to reach new customers. IBM also announced new work with the open source community to improve the development of general Linux kernel functionality, expanding its Linux focus around virtualization, Cell processor technologies, and security.
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| Opengear's high availability integrated infrastructure management gateways extend beyond Digi's passport and Avocent's merge point applications |
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Opengear has released the first two products in its new generation of Infrastructure Management gateways at the LinuxWorld Conference & Exposition in San Francisco.
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| Bivio launches Government market initiative |
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Bivio Network has launched its US federal government market initiative, announcing the signing of two government systems integrator partners. Acenes Technology Solutions Inc., and Federal Technology Solutions Inc. (FTSI) will market and sell networking solutions developed and integrated on Bivio's high-performance, programmable network appliance platforms. In addition, Acenes and FTSI will provide related network consulting, systems integration, procurement, and fulfillment services for government agencies.
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| Lockheed Martin selects SGI Altix 4700 server as host platform for F-35 Lightning II Training Devices |
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Lockheed Martin has selected the SGI Altix 4700 server to serve as the host computing platform for the F-35 "Lightning II" Training Devices. The F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter, is a multi-role fighter which combines stealth supersonic performance and advanced sensor fusion. The SGI-powered F-35 Training Devices host computer will allow Lockheed Martin to provide pilots with a high-fidelity deterministic real time environment that realistically simulates the capabilities of this next-generation fighter aircraft, which will support the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, United Kingdom and seven other International Partner nations. F-35 Training Devices will be powered by the SGI Altix 4700 and will train pilots for the kind of uncompromised combat performance required in the 21st century.
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| Sun Microsystems outpaces the market with new world record-breaking servers and workstation |
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Sun Microsystemshas added 10 new products to its Sun Fire server and Sun Ultra workstation families that run the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS).
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| DataCore SANmelody Virtual Storage Solution selected by Italy's Scuola Normale Superiore College of Pisa |
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The Scuola Normale Superiore, a university centre for teaching and research in Pisa, has adopted DataCore's SANmelody software in a project for the centralization of disk space intended to improve data protection through the creation of a storage area network (SAN). The SAN will be distributed across two buildings - providing a new level of fault tolerance, business continuity and disaster recovery. The university's Computing Center planned the solution in collaboration with Magirus, DataCore's value-added reseller in Italy.
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| Geotrace Technologies delivers world-class oil & gas solutions using Panasas ActiveScale Storage Cluster |
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Geotrace Technologies has deployed the Panasas ActiveScale Storage Cluster to help speed the delivery of seismic results in the search for new oil and gas deposits. Using the Panasas Storage Cluster, Geotrace scientists have dramatically improved the turnaround time of several critical processes running on the company's Linux cluster. By doing so, Geotrace has been able to boost productivity, allowing them to increase revenue by processing more jobs, and reduce their overall total cost of ownership (TCO) by streamlining management and system administrative tasks.
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| Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) receives National Science Foundation Award for storage system development |
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The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) was awarded $520,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help develop faster and smarter storage systems to improve and increase the processing power of high performance computing (HPC). The three-year grant is part of the High-End Computing University Research Activity (HECURA) programme, a national effort that promotes and funds research and education projects involving storage and retrieval of data in large-scale computing systems.
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| Industry
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The Grid |
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| Cracow Grid Workshop organisers call for paper abstracts |
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The Cracow Grid Workshop - CGW'06 will take place October 15-18, 2006 in Cracow, Poland. The Cracow Grid Workshop will cover current advances in Grid systems and Grid applications and will give an overview of the main European and national Grid projects. Deadline for paper abstract submission is August 31, 2006.
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| Solving the security challenge of dynamic networks |
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Europe is hurtling towards an information society capable of offering communication services anywhere in the world; a society where data and communication devices spontaneously form networks using any medium with any protocol to access any service. So far, such a proposition is not too secure. But researchers are on the case. As networks undergo profound changes in their very nature, expanding at dizzying speed, potential security risks are increasing at an equal or even greater rate. Yet there is one promising approach to solving the security problems posed by such fast expanding networks - that of evolutionary and adaptive security. Three IST projects are tackling the problem on this basis.
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| EU research driving the web services seismic shift |
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The growth of web services marks a seismic shift in computing. Web services, composed of a multitude of simple software applications, have the potential to crack the monolithic software application model and create a new on-line-services landscape, accessible to all. New research reveals that Europe is closely involved in setting the key standards for this development.
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| UK to launch online research archive to further biomedical discovery |
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Scientists will be able to access a vast collection of biomedical research at the touch of a button thanks to a major new initiative that aims to promote the free transfer of ideas in a bid to speed up scientific discovery. Based on a model currently used in the United States, UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) will provide free access to an online digital archive of peer-reviewed research papers in the medical and life sciences.
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| GridKa Grid School 2006 |
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Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe will its annual GridKa School in 2006, from September 11. - 15
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| EUMed-Grid 1st Conference Empowering eScience across the Mediterranean |
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The EUMEDGRID 1st Conference will present the vision of cross-national eInfrastructures as a driving force towards widening the European Research Area and bridging the digital divide between Europe and the neighboring Mediterranean Countries.
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| HCL and University of Melbourne to collaborate on Grid |
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HCL Technologies Ltd (HCL), an IndianIT services company, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with "The Grid Computing and Distributed Systems" (GRIDS) Laboratory at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
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| Portland Group announces PGI Cluster Development Kit |
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STMicroelectronics' Portland Group announced availability of its PGI Cluster Development Kit (CDK) in a roll configuration compatible with the popular Rocks cluster software distribution technology. The PGI CDK is a turn-key suite of software for building and testing programs designed to take advantage of the performance of Linux clusters. The Portland Group developed the PGI roll for Rocks with the leading Rocks' technologies supplier Platform Computing of Singapore.
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| Etnus announces flexible licensing exchange credit for TotalView Debugger |
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Etnus announced today its new TotalView 8 program featuring a new product for individual developers and mobile users, three new flexible license options, and a new exchange policy designed to meet the evolving needs of existing TotalView users.
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| Latest enhancements to the free Access Grid Toolkit are now available for download |
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A new version of the free and popular Access Grid Toolkit developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, is now available for download. The Access Grid Toolkit is software that uses audio, video, data and text to enable distributed researchers to work together as if they were at the same location.
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| New lightweight Grid offers complete security |
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A new lightweight Grid is being developed to offer complete security to those who use it. A computational Grid essentially provides a mechanism whereby a collection of computers with processing capability is made available to users with computational tasks to perform. M-grid, a teaching tool developed by academics at the University of Southampton, provides a system for building a computational Grid which allows students to explore the potential of such a vast system without any concerns about security.
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| Research makes Mount Etna sing |
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Predicting eruptions will become easier now scientists are using technology to translate the patterns in a volcano's behaviour into sound waves. The EU funded "Enabling Grids for E-sciencE" (EGEE) and the "E-Infrastructure shared between Europe and Latin America" (EELA) projects, which are already investigating volcano sonification at Mount Etna, Sicily, are using the GÉANT2 and ALICE-RedCLARA networks to further extend this important study to include Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano.
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