Oak Ridge National Laboratory is located in Knoxville, Tennessee. It is owned by the Department of Energy in the US of A and they are in news because they house the superfast computer Jaguar XT5.

With a performance speed of 1.759 petaflops or quadrillions of calculations per second, it is the world’s fastest computer. The laboratory aims to use this computer to solve problems related to climate change and there would also be other applications as well.

The Jaguar is a machine that would be used for peer-reviewed research. The computer has already been scheduled fo a billion hours of processor time by users which include National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Argonne National Laboratory and the National Science Foundation.

It would study enzymes, how one could develop better ethanol and also write algorithms for nuclear reactors which do not produce a lot of radioactive material. Examining the origins of the Universe, nuclear security and other tasks would be performed by the supercomputer as well. Oak Ridge already has some of the world’s fastest computers in its kitty including the Kraken. Looks like computers wil never be the same again.

Via: Eco Geek

Travelling by air isn’t that very difficult because all you have to do is buy a ticket and be at the airport on time. The stress upon the pilots and the flight controller, on the other hand, is nearly toxic. To prevent colliding with other planes, and birds, in the air, pilots have to rely upon data from radars and live visibility. This is often not possible in the case of bad weather conditions and the best option remains maintaining an extremely safe distance between planes (whilst in air) and flights (during takeoff).

Attempting to take aviation service to the next level, and to keep up with the steady rise in demand, a new automatic surveillance system has been designed by the Federal Aviation Administration. The Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) uses GPS for navigation and is a part of the Next Generation Air Transportation System. Shortened to NextGen, the ADS-B displays via satellite the weather conditions in the area, the location of airports on the ground, and the location of other planes in the air (including those that are dependent on ADS-B).

The use of the GPS enabled ADS-B would make it possible for pilots to fly the craft even in zero visibility, keep track of other aircrafts in the same area and would not need the constant help of the flight controllers on ground making each flight less strenuous for both parties involved as well as increasing the safety of everyone.

Via: NYTimes

The 12th version of Fedora Linux distribution derived from the old Red Hat Desktop and developed by the community, is now available for download. The system can be downloaded free of charge, either in the form of LiveCDs as a DVD installation.

Among the main features visible to the End User are the instant messaging client Empathy, compatible with various networks and with interesting features like desktop sharing and video conferencing.

There is also support audio via Bluetooth (which allows use of headphones and headsets), a new manager of network connections, a new desktop software packages and better support for tablets, and touch panels in both drivers as in applications, with versions of Gimp, Inkscape and Xournal optimized to take best advantage of this feature.

Fedora is also notable for being one of the few Linux distributions with official support (and simultaneously on each new version) to machines with PowerPC processors, making it an excellent option for anyone who wants to give new life to that old Mac G4 leaning against the cabinet. Moreover, there is a special version that uses KDE as its desktop environment, instead of the traditional Gnome (here in version 2.28)

Image Credit.

Via: Fedora Project.

Yup, there is absolutely no exaggeration here as that is exactly what a Haptic Cow promises for all those young and up coming veterinarians who are eager to learn their craft by sticking their hand up a cow’s rectum. Since the procedure is a must to check for pregnancy and health of the cow on certain occasions, you might as well use a ‘virtual cow’ to make it lot less tidy during the many times you learn the craft. But ask veterinarian and computer scientist Sarah Baillie and she will tell you that the purpose of the virtual cow is not that at all. In fact, it is there to make the experience a lot less painful for all the cattle on the planet.

Teaching a young veterinarian can be tough as instructors cannot exactly see what is happening on the inside. But now the virtual cow guarantees that the instructors know exactly what the student is doing and even the amount of pressure that is being applied during the procedure. ‘Virtual Bessie’ even Moos a bit when you apply pressure that is too high, just so that you know when to back off!

Much like how virtual reality is helping surgeons and doctors across the planet it seems it is now even helping animals and those who treat them. So what is next in line, you ask? Sarah Baillie is thinking of a Haptic Horse and a Haptic Cat…

Wired

The development team of the Moblin project, a Linux distribution optimized for netbooks originally created by Intel and now under the control of the Linux Foundation, announced Wednesday the launch of the first beta version of Moblin 2.1. Despite the small difference in the numbering, this version brings important changes in the question that matters most in a netbook: mobility.

The main highlight is support for modems and 3G connections (although so far only one modem is compatible, Ericsson MBM), and a system for managing devices. The browser has been refined and now supports plugins, and there is an installer for applications on the software store Moblin Garage. Finally, the connection manager can now handle Ethernet, Wi-Fi, WiMax and 3G, and there is support for more video resolutions, something important to anyone running Moblin on a nettop.

Moblin 2.1 Beta is available in 11 languages and can be downloaded for free at the official site in www.moblin.org. It operates mainly in netbook and nettops equipped with an Intel Atom.

The advantage of Moblin is a Linux distribution that combines most of the programs that the user might need: office suites, software engineering tools, electronics, email, instant messaging, among others.

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Via: Moblin.

ASUS is the first manufacturer to market a motherboard compatible with the new USB 3.0 standard. According to the website The Register, the P7P55D-E is compatible with the new Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 and features two integrated USB 3.0 ports, plus 10 other USB 2.0 ports and a SATA controller can transfer data at up to 6 GB / s.

Developed by Intel, USB 3.0 promises to transfer data at high speed from external devices and PCs In theory, the maximum transfer speed is 5 Gigabit (640 MB) per second, compared to 480 Megabit / s of the current USB 2.0. USB 3.0 controllers are also compatible with current USB 2.0 peripherals and 1.0 present.

A few months ago, information about other ASUS, the P6X58 Premium, circulated online, claiming that this was the first motherboard USB 3.0 market. However, although it has made several appearances at trade shows, it never went on sale. Therefore, the title is for the P7P55D-E.

The chipsets in P7P55D-E (Intel P55 Express) do not natively support USB 3.0, then the ASUS  add an extra chip, a driver from NEC, to the board. The company also plans to launch an “upgrade kit” for another of your motherboard, the P7P55D, which adds USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb / s, effectively turning it into a P7P55D-E.

For now, only the operating system already that has support for USB 3.0 is Linux. Price and release date for both the motherboard and to the expansion, were not defined.

Image Credit.

Via: The Register.

VMware delivered new versions of its applications that let you run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single PC with Windows or Linux and Macs. Both the Workstation 7, which runs on PC equipment, as the Fusion 3, developed for Mac platforms, come to market with support for Windows 7.

According to the portal InformationWeek, the workstation 7 can run virtual machines running Windows 7 to 32 or 64 bits. It runs on operating systems with x86 instruction set (ie, those that run on the processors used in PC since the first IBM-PC, 1981), including previous versions of Windows, Linux and Solaris x86, and Mac OS X Intel Macs.

THE 7 Workstation is available for download and costs US$ 189 per copy. Upgrades from previous versions cost US$ 99. According to the site TGDaily, VMware also presented a solution for users of Apple computer.

VMWare is not alone in the market and has competitors like VirtualBox, Sun (www.virtualbox.org), which uses the same concept of virtual machine, and QEMU (www.qemu.org), free software that uses the hardware itself the machine to create a new session system.

Via: InformationWeek and TGDaily.

While companies like AMD and Intel are trying to compress 3, 4 or even 6 cores in their processors, the chip maker American Tilera announced today that it plans to manufacture and sell a model with 100 cores called Tile-Gx. The main purpose of these processors, said Anant Agarwal, co-founder and CTO of the company, will be for use in servers that perform functions related to web such as search, indexing pages and video processing.

Agarwal also said that to run a rapid exchange of information, models of Tilera has organized parallel cores in a square, within which there are multiple points for input and output data. Since the chips from Intel and AMD have nuclei arranged as crossbars, a design that he says can bring problems of congestion.

Model Gx100, one of the processors with 100 cores will use a maximum of 55 watts of power and will cost up to £ 1710 when placed on the market in 2011. Before that, Intel plans to release for sale the CPU with Nehalem-EX 8-core and AMD expects to release the Opteron, with 12. Notice how neither of them has three digits in the decimal places.

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Via: GGG.

The 21.5 inch LCD has great quality with an 83 percent color range and a 50,000:1 contrast ratio. You get a widescreen display with its full HD 1920 by 1080 dimensions. Its 1080 p-native screen has its own two-megapixel webcam and it also takes either DVI or VGA for video input. Besides, the LCD has a 2 mp webcam and dual microphones for your video chats.

The touch and the webcam signal are pushed to the attached computer through a built-in four-port USB.
The latest of innovations by Dell will cost American buyers $469.

Via: Electronista, Dell

In effect, it shows you direction without you having to see. Call it an external instinct that works for you! At the moment, its uncanny appearance and utility looks a little odd for lay people like us. But then the gadget has an immense potential to become the navigation device for those who cannot see – the sight impaired.

The ear navigator is called Pull-Navi. It has six helmet-mounted motors to pull the wearer’s ears forward, backward, left, right, up and down, in the respective directions that is. Designers of Pull Navi say users can follow its lead nearly at the instinct level. They can move forward, backward, speed up or even slow down, when they move. It is a finely tuned helmet. Connect the thing to a GPS, and the blind in sight would not have to be at the mercy of helping hands or their walking sticks.

Via: Engadget, Kaji-lab