This years stories

The Human Brain Project: Winner of the of the largest European scientific funding competition

The European Commission has officially announced the selection of the Human Brain Project (HBP) as one of its two FET Flagship projects. The new project will federate European efforts to address one of the greatest challenges of modern science: understanding the human brain. The goal of the Human Brain Project is to pull together all our existing knowledge about the human brain and to reconstruct the brain, piece by piece, in supercomputer-based models and simulations. The models offer the prospect of a new understanding of the human brain and its diseases and of completely new computing and robotic technologies. On January 28, the European Commission supported this vision, announcing that it has selected the HBP as one of two projects…

Data Center Switch Market to Approach $16 Billion

In its most recently published Data Center Switch Long-Range Forecast Report, Crehan Research predicts that the Data Center Switch market will approach $16 billion by 2017. The report shows that Ethernet, including Fibre Channel-over-Ethernet, will become an ever-increasing portion of the overall market. Furthermore, within the Ethernet segment, Crehan also anticipates very strong growth for both 10GBASE-T switches and 40 Gigabit Ethernet-capable switches (40GbE). These trends are illustrated in the accompanying figure. "Given the mid-2012 step-function increase in 10GBASE-T server adapter and LAN-on-Motherboard shipments and subsequent introduction of numerous attractively-priced 10GBASE-T data center switches, we expect exponential growth in 10GBASE-T switch port shipments," said Seamus Crehan , president of Crehan Research. "We believe the strong ramp in 40GbE will be…

New Research Will Help Shed Light on Role of Amazon Forests in Global Carbon Cycle

Berkeley Lab scientist Jeffrey Chambers in the Amazon forest instrumenting the upper canopy from a 30-meter tower with micro-meteorological sensors.

Berkeley Lab scientists devise new tools for detecting previously unknown tree mortality. The Earth’s forests perform a well-known service to the planet, absorbing a great deal of the carbon dioxide pollution emitted into the atmosphere from human activities. But when trees are killed by natural disturbances, such as fire, drought or wind, their decay also releases carbon back into the atmosphere, making it critical to quantify tree mortality in order to understand the role of forests in the global climate system. Tropical old-growth forests may play a large role in this absorption service, yet tree mortality patterns for these forests are not well understood. Now scientist Jeffrey Chambers and colleagues at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National…

Mellanox Wins ZDNet Awards

Mellanox Technologies has been presented with two data center interconnect awards: the ZDNet China Best Network Switch awarded to Mellanox’s SX1024 non-blocking Top-of-Rack (ToR) 10/40Gb/s Ethernet Switch and the China Network World 2012 Innovative Converged Network Solution for Cloudawarded to Mellanox’s Virtual Protocol Interconnect® (VPI) end-to end solution including ConnectX-3 adapters and SwitchX-2 switches for both FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand and 10/40Gb/s Ethernet based interconnect solutions. Mellanox’s ConnectX-3 VPI adapters provide performance-leading FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand and 10/40GbE for unprecedented scalability and flexibility. ConnectX-3’s innovative design, low power and flexible protocol capability delivers the highest level of interconnect throughput while reducing system power consumption and enabling cost-effective networking topologies. This makes ConnectX-3 the preferred solution for high-performance computing, Web 2.0, cloud, virtualized…

Researchers Adjust Climate Models For 'Waste Heat'

This composite image shows a global view of Earth at night, compiled from over 400 satellite images. New research shows that major cities, which generally correspond with the nighttime lights in this image, can have a far-reaching impact on temperatures.

Even if you live more than 1,000 miles from the nearest large city, it could be affecting your weather.In a new study that shows the extent to which human activities are influencing the atmosphere, scientists have concluded that the heat generated by everyday activities in metropolitan areas alters the character of the jet stream and other major atmospheric systems. This affects temperatures across thousands of miles, significantly warming some areas and cooling others, according to the study in Nature Climate Change.The extra "waste heat" generated from buildings, cars, and other sources in major Northern Hemisphere urban areas causes winter warming across large areas of northern North American and northern Asia. Temperatures in some remote areas increase by as much as…