This years stories

Genome-wide Atlas of Gene Enhancers in the Brain On-line

Axel Visel led the development of a gene enhancer atlas for the cerebrum that will provide new insight into how the brain develops and functions, and how it malfunctions in neurological disorders.

Collaboration Led by Berkeley Lab Researchers Creates High-Resolution Map of Gene Regulatory Elements in the Brain Future research into the underlying causes of neurological disorders such as autism, epilepsy and schizophrenia, should greatly benefit from a first-of-its-kind atlas of gene-enhancers in the cerebrum (telencephalon). This new atlas, developed by a team led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is a publicly accessible Web-based collection of data that identifies and locates thousands of gene-regulating elements in a region of the brain that is of critical importance for cognition, motor functions and emotion. “Understanding how the brain develops and functions, and how it malfunctions in neurological disorders, remains one of the most daunting…

CESGA provides infrastructure for nanotechnology design elements that promises to revolutionize optical communications

• Design nanoscale antennas for optical communications. • Nanolink devices could revolutionize communications in future nanochips. • CESGA infrastructure contributed to the calculations needed in development. The Universities of Extremadura and Vigo have designed a nanolink that would solve the interconnection and warming problems in future optical integrated circuits, or nanochips. In the current prototype used for future nanochips or silicon plasmonic guides for transmitting data at high speed using light beams. The problem is that these guides carry large energy losses and bulky. This space and high heat dissipation limit the capacity integration and miniaturization in nanochips. The work avoids the use of these guidelines, to be replaced by a new concept in optical communications: link directive beams with…

NERSC Supercomputers Help Explain the Last Big Freeze

This image shows the different routes that the meltwater could have taken to the ocean.

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 the Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), two researchers many have finally solved this mystery with unprecedentedly detailed simulations. Their results indicate that melting glaciers sent torrents of freshwater through Canada’s Mackenzie Valley into the Arctic, where ocean currents would have transported it to the North Atlantic (near Greenland), allowing it to disrupt the ocean’s heat engine. “With 18 kilometers between each grid-point, we have the…

AMD’s SeaMicro SM15000 Server Achieves Certification for Rackspace Private Cloud, Validated for OpenStack

Providing unprecedented computing efficiency for “Nova in a Box” and object storage capacity for “Swift in a Rack”AMD SeaMicro SM15000 server is certified for the Rackspace Private Cloud. “Nova in a Box” and “Swift in a Rack” are respectively the most efficient compute and highest storage capacity solutions validated for OpenStack. The product certification for mass compute and object storage ensures that enterprise deployments of Rackspace Private Cloud on AMD’s SeaMicro SM15000 servers are a proven and rigorously tested solution, enabling peace of mind for enterprises around the world. As a part of The Rackspace Open Cloud platform, the company launched the Rackspace Private Cloud Software in August 2012 with thousands of organizations in over 125 countries spanning all continents…

UT engineer wins Japan award (50 million yen) for innovative semiconductor materials

C. Grant Willson wins Japan Prize C. Grant Willson, professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, has won the Japan Prize, an international award similar to the Nobel Prize, for his development of a process that is now used to manufacture nearly all of the microprocessors and memory chips in the world. He's sharing the 50 million yen (approximately $560,000 in U.S. dollars) prize with his colleague and friend Jean M.J. Fréchet, who is now vice president for research and professor of chemical science at King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia. The winners were announced today in a ceremony in Tokyo. The Japan Prize Presentation Ceremony and Banquet, with the emperor of Japan in…