Slashdot Mirror
Domain: lsu.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to lsu.edu.
Stories · 8
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Dark Matter Discovered Near Solar System?
gpronger writes "The ATIC (Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter) has potentially discovered the presence of dark matter close (only 3000 light-years) to our solar system. The system detected a large-amount of high energy cosmic rays which match the theoretical signature of dark matter annihilating itself. The universe is believed to be composed of about 25% dark matter, but there has been little evidence of it. This discovery, if correct, would be the first." The paper was published in Nature , but it requires a subscription to see beyond the abstract. -
Low Cost Panoramic Views From 112,000 feet
IgorC writes "Some engineering students at Texas A&M University have just received data gathered from a low cost 6 Mpixels digital camera (a Canon PowerShot S3 IS). Via NASA balloon, the camera flew up some 36 kms for 18 hours while storing more than 1600 images. The group writes: ' We are in our preliminary result discovery phase and patched up some of these frames together to produce several panoramic views from that altitude (the camera was looking down). They are viewable on the GeoCam blog. We intend on porting that information on Google Maps and Google Earth. For those of you who are undergrads and want to do something better, the folks at HASP-LSU will have a call for participants next year in their announcement page.'" -
Low Cost Panoramic Views From 112,000 feet
IgorC writes "Some engineering students at Texas A&M University have just received data gathered from a low cost 6 Mpixels digital camera (a Canon PowerShot S3 IS). Via NASA balloon, the camera flew up some 36 kms for 18 hours while storing more than 1600 images. The group writes: ' We are in our preliminary result discovery phase and patched up some of these frames together to produce several panoramic views from that altitude (the camera was looking down). They are viewable on the GeoCam blog. We intend on porting that information on Google Maps and Google Earth. For those of you who are undergrads and want to do something better, the folks at HASP-LSU will have a call for participants next year in their announcement page.'" -
Beowulf Pioneer Lured From Cal Tech to LSU
An anonymous reader writes "Thomas Sterling, a pioneer of clustered computing, including /.'s beloved Beowulf cluster, has has accepted a fully-tenured professorship at Louisiana State University's Center for Computation and Technology, ditching his old post at Cal Tech. From TFA: "At LSU, he hopes to develop the next generation of high-performance computers that will give birth to true artificial intelligence. By making computer chips more efficient, Sterling believes he can change computing by "one to three orders of magnitude" that will transform how humans interact with technology."" -
Keeping Your Keg Cool Sans Ice
DrLudicrous writes "Case Western Reserve University is reporting that first year physics graduate student Adam Hunnell has come up with the idea for a Keg Wrap, a thermoelectric sheet that will be able to maintain a full keg at 32-35F by running off of wall current or even a car's cigarette lighter. The funding for this project is coming from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, which has provided Mr. Hunnell with a $20,000 grant. Serious stuff - I'd rather see this than another few million dumped into quantum computing." -
Extinction Of Human Languages Affects Programming?
Tanmay Kudyadi writes "An article from NewScientist.com reports that half of all human languages will have disappeared by the end of the century, as smaller societies are assimilated into national and global cultures. This may be great news if one is looking at a common standard for communication, but it dosen't help those designing the next generation of programming languages. For example, there's an extremely strong link between Panini's Grammar and computer science (PDF link), and with every language lost, there is a possibility that we may have missed an opportunity at improving the underlying heuristics." -
Experience with 'Secure' Exam Testing Software?
Durindana writes "My law school has decided using the Exam4 software from Extegrity, thinking it would be a good idea. I disagree; the software can only be used by students on their own laptops, and (of course) Exam4 is mono-platform. Anyone have experience using this software (e.g. security level, reliability) or, hopefully, successfully opposing its use? It strikes me as a hell of a disadvantage to students who'd like an alternative to hand-writing but - for some strange reason - don't own a Windows laptop." -
Linux Clusters Finally Break the TeraFLOP barrier
cworley submitted - several times - this well-linked submission about a slightly boring topic - fast computers. "Top500.org has just released its latest list of the world's fastest supercomputers (updated twice yearly). For the first time, Linux Beowulf clusters have joined the teraFLOP club, with six new clusters breaking the teraFLOP barrier. Two Linux clusters now rank in the Top 10: Lawrence Livermore's "MCR" (built by Linux NetworX ) ranks #5 achieving 5.694 teraFLOP/s, and Forecast Systems Laboratory's "Jet" (built by HPTi) ranks #8 reaching 3.337 TeraFLOP/s. Other Linux clusters surpassing the teraFLOP/s barrier include: LSU's "SuperMike" at #17 (from Atipa ), the University at Buffalo at #22 and Sandia National Lab at #32 (both from Dell ), an Itanium cluster for British Petroleum Houston at #42 (from HP ), and Argonne National Labs at #46 (from Linux NetworX ) reached just over the one teraFLOP/s mark with 361 processors. In the previous Top500 list compiled last June, the fastest Intel based Netfinity 1024 processor clusters from IBM were sub-teraFLOP/s and the University of Heidelberg's AMD based "HELICS" cluster (built by Megware ) held the top tux rank at #35 with 825 GFLOP/s."