12/28/01 -- NAS Scientist Co-develops Unique Load-Balancing Solution
NAS Division scientist Rupak Biswas has codeveloped a novel load-balancing algorithm for scientific applications. The method is described in "Parallel Processing of Adaptive Meshes with Load Balancing," which appears in the December 2001 issue of IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS). Biswas collaborated with Sajal Das and Daniel Harvey, University of Texas at Arlington.

12/20/01 -- IPG Workshop Highlights Collaboration, Web Services
Researchers from across the U.S. gathered recently to discuss the current state of NASA’s geographically distributed computational network, the Information Power Grid (IPG). At the third annual IPG workshop, held December 4-5 in Palo Alto, Calif., more than 100 computer scientists from academic institutions, government labs, and NASA centers learned about recent developments in grid technology.

12/07/01 -- Cart3D Used to Study Man-Portable Surface to Air Missiles
Scientist in the NAS Division's Applications Branch have extended the capabilities of NASA's Cart3D aerodynamic analysis software to simulate the unsteady flight of infrared-guided, man-portable surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). The simulations are being used to analyze the aerodynamic performance characteristics of these SAMS.

10/30/01 -- NASA IPG Team Meets Another Major Milestone
NASA's Information Power Grid (IPG) team reached another major project milestone by demonstrating the use of grid services for remotely connecting to scientific instruments, as well as distributed, real-time access to instrument data.

10/4/01 -- NAS Speeds New Rocket Turbine Design
Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) were recently able to shave three-and-a-half months off the task of simulating a supersonic turbine, thanks to the work of NAS Division user services staff. The simulations were performed on supercomputers located at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Facility, to analyze the unsteady flow in an advanced turbine design. The results will help in the design of more efficient and durable rocket engines.

Summer 2001

9/21/01 -- Chimera Grid Tools Version 1.6 Released
A new version of the Chimera Grid Tools (CGT), a set of programs and scripts for generating overset grids, was released today. Developed at Ames Research Center, CGT is widely used for solving complex computational fluid dynamics (CFD) problems in a variety of real-world applications, including aerospace, marine, automotive, environmental, and sports.

9/18/01 -- Ames Team Joins New York Rescue Efforts
As the NAS Division joins the nation in prayers and hopes for victims, their families, and rescue workers, a six-person team from Ames Research Center flew to New York on Wednesday, September 19, to help relieve other volunteers in the enormous search and rescue effort. Among the team is Mark Tangney, NAS Division facilities manager and overall coordinator of the Ames Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team (DART).

8/23/01 -- NAS Division Overcomes 802.11b Wireless Security Flaws
The network security group in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center, in California’s Silicon Valley has successfully installed a secure interoperable wireless network that addresses the well-known problems of the 802.11b standard wireless systems -- with a minimum of time and investment.

8/07/01 -- IPG Team Given Prestigious NASA Award
NASA's Information Power Grid (IPG) team recently received the NASA Group Achievement Award, presented to selected groups who make outstanding contributions to the agency's mission. The NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center is leading the effort to build and test the IPG, a network of high performance computers, data storage devices, and scientific instruments. Ames is collaborating with colleagues at NASA's Glenn and Langley Research Centers on the IPG project.

8/02/01 -- New Boron-Nitrogen Nanotube Research Published
A new development in the field of nanotechnology by NAS researcher Deepak Srivastava is described in Physical Review B, (Vol. 63, pg. 195413, 2001). In "Anisotropic Nanomechanics of Boron-Nitride Nanotubes: Nanostructured Skin Effect," Srivastava and colleagues Madhu Menon (University of Kentucky) and KyeongJae Cho (Stanford University) studied the way in which boron-nitride (BN) nanotubes respond to compressive strains, and their mode of plastic deformation. Their findings show that BN nanotubes may be useful as reinforcing fibers in ultra-light and strong, functional composite materials. Additionally, such a material will exhibit an anisotropy against external axial strains -- when the nanotube structure is compressed from both sides, damage occurs to one side only.

7/24/01 -- New NAS Technical Reports Online
Several new NAS Technical Reports are now available on the web. One report, A Framework for Control and Observation in Distributed Environments, by Warren Smith, describes a software framework for control and observation of resources, services, and applications that supports a dynamic grid environment, and provides examples of how the framework can be used.

Get a complete listing of NAS Technical Reports.

7/18/01 -- New NASA Supercomputer Models Earth Climate at Warp Speed
Using what may be the most powerful parallel supercomputer of its kind, NASA scientists recently used a highly advanced prototype processor to significantly advance the ability to evaluate the global impact of natural and human-induced activities on our climate.

Spring 2001

6/26/01-- NAS Engineer Honored at Annual Flemming Awards
NAS Division aerospace engineer Stuart Rogers has been awarded the prestigious Arthur S. Flemming Award for his contributions to the field of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Rogers' development and application of CFD tools have resulted in significant strides in solving real-world fluid dynamics problems, including analysis and design of complex aircraft, spacecraft, and submarines.

The Arthur S. Flemming Awards, established in 1948, honor outstanding federal employees. For more information on OVERFLOW and INS3D, contact Rogers at 650 604-4481 or rogers@nas.nasa.gov.

6/1/01 -- NASA Ames Gets New Cray SV1 Supercomputer
NASA's Consolidated Supercomputing Management Office (CoSMO) has leased a Cray SV1e vector supercomputer from Cray Inc. Seattle, through Government Micro Resources Inc. The system, installed at the NAS Facility at Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. on May 25, will be used for scientific applications in aerospace, earth science, and space science.

5/22/01 -- Race Car and Ozone Teaching Modules Updated
The NAS Division's web team has updated the division's most popular web pages -- two K-12 study modules designed for teachers and students. Both modules have glossaries and images to download.

5/09/01 --Report Compares Parameter Study Tools
A recent NAS technical report "A Comparison of Parameter Study Creation and Job Submission Tools," compares the differences among available general-purpose parameter study and job submission tools. NAS authors Adrian DeVivo, Maurice Yarrow, and Karen McCann, focus on comparing a new NAS-developed software package, called ILab, from other tools. Results show that ILab, is easier to use, completes jobs significantly faster, and is better suited to research and engineering environments.

5/01/01 -- Mansour Appointed Deputy Director for CTR
Dr. Nagi Nicolas Mansour, lead scientist for the NAS Division's Physics Simulation and Modeling Office, has been appointed Deputy Director for the Center for Turbulence Research (CTR) at Ames Reseach Center. Dr. Mansour has extensive experience in turbulence research, and has served as Ames coordinator to the CTR for the past six years. Mansour will continue his duties in the NAS Division.

4/24/01 -- NAS Name Change Reflects HPC Focus
After nearly 20 years of sustained growth, the Numerical Aerospace Simulation (NAS) Systems Division, located within the Information Sciences and Technology Directorate is changing its name to the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division. The change more accurately reflects the division's leadership role within the high-performance computing and information technology communities.

4/17/01 -- NAS Researcher Tackles Puzzling Nanotechnology Problem
NAS researcher Toshishige Yamada recently presented a new interpretation of a problem that has puzzled scientists for several years. In the past, researchers have observed strange current-voltage (I-V) patterns in a scanning tunneling microscope tip-carbon nanotube system, and attributed them to the intrinsic nanotube properties.

4/05/01 -- Spring 2001 Issue of Gridpoints Online
Take a look at the spring 2001 issue of Gridpoints (PDF) the NAS Systems Division's quarterly magazine. In "Chimera Grid Tools Software,"researchers William Chan and Stuart Rogers describe the updated features in this well-known software package for generating overset grids. Other stories detail the Information Power Grid's newest tools and successes.

Winter 2001

3/28/01 -- NASA-Industry Team Improves Supercomputers to Reach Dreams
Simulating life's beginning and accurately predicting hurricane paths are two distant dreams that came a small step closer to reality when NASA recently was first to "boot" what may be the most powerful parallel supercomputer of its kind. Ames contributed innovations to previous test bed machines that helped make the SGI Origin 3000 512-processor computer possible. Full press release...

3/19/01 -- New Globus Quick Start Guide Available
An updated version of the Globus Quick Start Guide is now available online in PDF format for users of NASA's Information Power Grid (IPG). The guide helps new IPG users get started on using the grid. This version includes an extensive chapter on the Globus Resource Specification Language (RSL), a common interchange language to provide complicated resource descriptions.

3/13/01 -- Understanding How Electrons Spin
A study to determine how electrons spin has been published in the journal, Physica Status Solidi-B, Vol. 222, p. 523 (2000). The study, "Dyakonov-Perel Effect on Spin Dephasing in n-Type GaAs," conducted by Cun-Zheng Ning, NAS Research Branch, and M. Wu, University of California at Santa Barbara, explores the possibility of using electron spin coherence for application to faster, more energy-efficient information processing in the future..

3/6/01-- IPG Website Gets New Look, Features
The NASA Information Power Grid (IPG) website has been updated to provide grid users and developers with a new navigation system to locate information more easily. The update includes Launch Pad, an easy-to-use job-launching tool released in February 2001. The website, which also sports a new look, is geared toward scientists and engineers using the IPG high-performance computing resources.

2/20/01 --New Communication Lines Open for Grid Community
Two new methods of communicating and collaborating for NASA's Information Power Grid (IPG) community have recently been established. The "ipg-applications" mailing list is a forum for discussion, collaboration, and posting of issues related to grid computing, algorithms, and applications that are now or can potentially run on the IPG infrastructure. Other topics of general interest to the IPG applications community may also be posted.

2/9/01 -- New Nanotechnology Paper Published
A NAS nanotechnology research paper, "Temperature Dependence of the Thermal Conductivity of Nanotubes," by M. Osman and Deepak Srivastava, has been published in the journal Nanotechnology (Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2001, 21-24).

1/23/01 --High Dependability Computing Workshop a Success
The first High Dependability Computing Consortium (HDCC) workshop was held at the NAS Facility January 10-12 to gather parties interested in making computer software more reliable for the future. In a partnership to form the HDCC, Carnegie Mellon University and NASA Ames Research Center had the same goal in mind

1/03/01 -- New Web Features for NAS Users
A secure new tool for scientists using the NAS Facility's supercomputing resources debuts this week on our website. The System Status page, allows users to view important information on the operational status and utilization of computing and storage resources. User can also check scheduled maintenance periods and get other useful data.

1/02/01 -- New NAS Tech Report Published
Check out our newest technical report, "Efficient Cache Use for Stencil Operations on Structured Discretization Grids," by NAS researchers Michael Frumpkin and Rob Van der Wijngaart.