(editor's note: A 100-gigabit network that allows for massive amounts of data to be readily available globally? Now that's some information sharing! How about a car that gets 3,300 miles per gallon? A "Supermileage Team" is on it's way to proving it! On May 4th, "The Avengers" superheroes movie opens. It seems there is some serious science going on as well!
In my daily treks through the news files of the world I'm amazed at the depth and scope of emerging science technologies! In the bigger picture of our changing world, we understand that these are stepping stones towards joining our Galactic community of scientists.
~All my Love, Boo)
A 100-Gigabit Highway for Science: Researchers Take a 'Test Drive' On ANI Testbed
By 2014, when the next United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is published, experts predict that 2 petabytes of data will have been generated for it - that's a 580 percent increase in data production. Because thousands of researchers around the world contribute to the generation and analysis of this data, a reliable, high-speed network is needed to transport the torrent of information.
In an effort to spur U.S. scientific competitiveness, as well as accelerate development and widespread deployment of 100-gigabit technology, the Advanced Networking Initiative (ANI) was created with $62 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and implemented by ESnet. ANI was established to build a 100 Gbps national prototype network and a wide-area network testbed.
So far more than 25 groups have taken advantage of ESnet's wide-area testbed, which is open to researchers from government agencies and private industry to test new, potentially disruptive technologies without interfering with production science network traffic. The testbed currently connects three unclassified DOE supercomputing facilities: the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) in Oakland, Calif., the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) in Argonne, Ill., and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
"No other networking organization has a 100-gigabit network testbed that is available to researchers in this way," says Brian Tierney, who heads ESnet's Advanced Networking Technologies Group. "Our 100G testbed has been about 80 percent booked since it became available in January, which just goes to show that there are a lot of researchers hungry for a resource like this."
Mowing Down the Competition: Supermileage Team Aims to Break Fuel Barriers
Can a car really get 3,300 miles to the gallon? The University of Michigan’s Supermileage Team is on its way to proving it can - with a lawnmower engine. The team’s goal this year is to beat the North American record of 3,169 miles per gallon, and to better it by reaching 3,300 mpg.
“Fuel efficiency is one of those issues prevalent in society today,” said chief engineer and co-founder Brett Merkel, a senior in mechanical engineering. “The technology we’re coming up with can have far-reaching effects, and be implemented in just a few years.”
In fact, that process has already begun. The fuel injection system, designed by mechanical engineering student and team member Lihang Nong for the team’s vehicle, is now the focus of a start-up called PicoSpray. The company won the $20,000 second prize in the Michigan Clean Energy Venture Challenge earlier this year, and it was selected to spend the next term as a tenant in the U-M student business incubator TechArb.
Journal Explores the Science Behind “The Avengers” Superheroes
There is some serious science going on in the comic book movie, The Avengers, opening May 4, according to an article recently published in JOM, the technical journal of The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS).
In the JOM article, he discusses how fictional weapons, such as Ironman’s armor and Captain America’s shield, are actually within the realm of possibility thanks to new and emerging technologies. “We have control over the atomic world that we didn’t have 20 years ago,” he notes. “Through high-end microscopy tools, we can visualize and manipulate the very microstructure of a material to achieve ultrahigh strength and other truly amazing characteristics. The next frontier is the ability to accurately predict how we can create materials with specific properties—a true materials by design capability.”
Also featured in the article is the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange, which provided scientific consultation on The Avengers movie.
