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The Aug. 29 Director's Special Colloquium by Thomas J. Meyer will be held in the Building 402 Auditorium.
Meyer is Los Alamos' associate laboratory director for Strategic and Supporting Research. His talk, "Sharing the Knowledge: Technology Transfer at a National Laboratory" will begin at 3 p.m. All employees whose schedules permit are invited to attend. Refreshments will be served.
Argonne is one of four institutions tapped to build what will be the world's most powerful computing infrastructure for scientific research. The "Distributed Terascale Facility" (DTF) will be built with a $53 million award from the National Science Foundation.
The DTF will be used to solve problems in scientific fields from biology and genomics to astronomy. "The DTF will extend U.S. leadership in high-performance distributed computing," said Rick Stevens, director of Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science Division. "It will enable scientists to combine resources -- not just at these four institutions, but at a hundred institutions working together."
Argonne's partners in the project are the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California at San Diego and the California Institute of Technology.
Together, computer scientists at the four organizations will build a computing system with more than 13.6 teraflops (trillions of calculations per second) of computing power as well as facilities capable of managing and storing more than 450 terabytes (trillions of bytes) of data.
Argonne will lead the effort to deploy networks, advanced distributed computing software, and high-resolution rendering and remote visualization capabilities. This effort will require a one-teraflop IBM Linux cluster with parallel visualization hardware.
Computational power supplied by Linux clusters purchased through the DTF award and distributed across the four DTF sites will total 11.6 teraflops of computing power. In addition, two teraflop Linux cluster systems already in use at NCSA will be integrated into the DTF system, creating the 13.6-teraflop system.
The clusters will operate as a single distributed facility, linked via a dedicated optical network that will initially operate at 40 gigabits per second and later be upgraded to 50-80 gigabits per second. This DTF network, developed in partnership with Qwest, will transport data 16 times faster than the fastest research networks now in operation.
The DTF network, which combines the widely separated Linux clusters into a single computational powerhouse, is made possible by Globus Grid software tools. This technology includes software that provides security, resource and data management (efficiently moving data from storage to the processing units), communication, fault detection and portability (the ability to run on different computer systems and architectures).
The Globus project is developing fundamental technologies needed to build computational grids, systems that supply computing power to users in much the same manner as an electrical grid supplies power to consumers. The Globus Project is a collaboration among computer scientists at Argonne, the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, NCSA and other institutions.
Sixty graduate students from across the country attended the third National School on Neutron and X-ray Scattering at Argonne from August 13-25.
The school combines lectures and experiments to teach students the fundamentals of the interaction of X-rays and neutrons with matter, synchrotron radiation and neutron beams.
"Argonne is the best place in the country for the school because it is the only location that has these two types of user facilities together," said Harold Myron, director of the Division of Educational Programs (DEP).
Researchers worked with small groups of students to run experiments and analyze data together. "As part of the hands-on training during the school, Evan Maxey and I worked with two small groups of students who were interested in studying powder diffraction," said Jim Richardson (IPNS). "We prepared powdered samples for diffraction experiments on the General Purpose Powder Diffractometer at IPNS."
The students -- 39 men and 21 women -- came from such disciplines as physics, chemistry, geology, biochemistry, materials science and biomedical and mechanical engineering.
Four Argonne divisions _ DEP, Intense Pulsed Neutron Source, Advanced Photon Source and Materials Science -- conducted the school. Organizers were Myron, Dean Haeffner (UPD), Ray Osborn (MSD) and Carol Reynolds (DEP).
Lecturers included former Argonne scientist Sunil Sinha (University of California), David Price (MSD) and Dennis Mills (UPD). Jyotsana Lal (IPNS) and Jim Wang (XFD) coordinated the experiments.
Other lecturers were from the University of Missouri, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology and IBM.
The school is supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences.
Argonne-West's bake sale to benefit the United Way will be held outside the Laboratory & Office Building lobby Wednesday, Sept. 12.
The sale will run from 8:30 a.m. to noon -- or until the baked goods run out.
Employees are invited to bake a favorite recipe. Participants who plan to donate baked goods should contact Shelly Havlovick (RPS) at ext. 3-7653 or shelly.havlovick @anl.gov.
Joseph G. Asbury, 63, retired deputy to the Argonne director, died Aug. 17 at his home in Hyde Park.
Asbury had been at Argonne for 31 years until his retirement in April 2000. A physicist by training, he joined Argonne as a staff scientist in its high-energy physics division. He also worked in the Energy and Environmental Sciences Division before joining the Office of the Director as deputy in 1983. As deputy to the director, he was in charge of strategic planning for the laboratory. He was also its senior economist.
He received his Ph.D. in physics from Purdue University.
Argonne's director emeritus, Alan Schriesheim, described Asbury as "an extraordinary individual who projected warmth and sympathy and possessed a keen intellect. He was a terrific listener and could make sense out of the most arcane issues.
"He was an individual with the highest sense of honor and integrity, and his judgment was respected by an astonishing variety of people both within and external to Argonne. There are many at Argonne today who are indebted to Joe for the masterful manner in which he drew up strategic plans and his ability to assemble resources to see that the strategies were implemented."
Schriesheim added, "Joe was especially proud of his involvement in the recruiting of women and minorities to science careers and his service as chair of the steering committee of Argonne's Women in Science and Technology program."
Lab director Hermann Grunder said, "During his career at Argonne, Joe's contributions were numerous, varied and significant. For many of us, he was not only a valued colleague, but also a friend."
Asbury is survived by his wife, Mimi (Marie Kenyon) of Chicago; his son, Joseph K., of New York; his daughter and son-in-law, Katrin Asbury and Shawn Greene, also of New York; his sister and brother-in-law, Blanche and Dale Kiefer of Cincinnati; and his great-aunt, Blanche Asbury, also of Cincinnati.
In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that memorials be made to St. Thomas the Apostle Church, 5472 South Kimbark St., Chicago, IL 60637, or to a charity of the giver's choice.
Argonne News deadlines will change due to the Labor Day holiday, Monday, Sept. 3.
All news, seminars and classified ads for the Sept. 10 issue must be submitted by 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 31.
The Argonne Credit Union (ACU) will hold an informational meeting for anyone interested in joining the financial institution. The orientation will provide an overview of the credit union's financial products and services.
The meeting will be held Thursday, Aug. 30, from noon to 1 p.m. in Argonne-East's Building 213 Cafeteria, Suite A.
Argonne, DOE and University of Chicago employees may bring their lunches and learn about such topics as:
How the ACU's rates compare with area
financial institutions.
How ACU services may help save money.
How technology allows 24-hour access to ACU
accounts.
Space is limited. Call ext. 2-5800 to reserve a seat. Those who cannot attend can visit the ACU for more information, call the above number or visit the ACU Web site.