Science! Synchrotron, Clusters, and more!

[tcpip]

Had the opportunity to attend a one-day Matlab conference for release 2012b last Thursday, held at the lovely Melbourne Rendezvous Hotel; great location, rather average talks. On Sunday went to the OpenDay of the Australian Synchrotron; very surprised to see a little bit of my indirect work making an appearance in the introductory lecture. Whilst synchrotrons are more famous for the recreation of the first nanoseconds of the universe and those related sub-atomic particles (which is awesome enough), the Australian sync does somewhat more practical work in the health and material sciences.

On a somewhat related topic, we now have nearly all of the hardware for our new cluster installed; there's still not much public information that can be released on the matter except to say that it can reach a fairly impressive 45.9 teraflops, which makes it "somewhat better" than our Operton cluster, which is a little bit long in the tooth. As the project manager for our deliverables, I'm getting a little nervous about schedules, especially with so few tasks available in parallel (there is a unintentional double-barrelled pun there that only HPC project managers - a very rare breed - would get).

XCKD once famously remarked on the relationship between science and politics, and as such the good ddstory has provided an excellent contribution to the subject (telemann's response is beautiful anmd then there's a GOP senator who wants to cut science funding 'cause those dang researchers read too much). More locally, for all the nay-sayers (which included myself under some circumstances), Australia's carbon price is reducing emissions, and with potential decline in consumer prices on the way.

Comments

[fluffyblanket.livejournal.com]

Schrödinger sees a connection between Advaita Vedanta and subatomic particles.
I see Ms.Gillard has put a male MP in his place.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Schrödinger sees a connection between Advaita Vedanta and subatomic particles.

Sounds interesting; do you have a citation for that?

I see Ms.Gillard has put a male MP in his place.

He's said some pretty atrocious things in the past; I believe you'll find a link in my last post.

[fluffyblanket.livejournal.com]

http://rivr.sulekha.com/schrodinger-and-advaita_458856_blog

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Very interesting! I really had no idea about that - mind you, I don't have much of an idea about the religion of most scientists to be perfectly honest.

I can certainly see how wave theory could lend itself to an argument in favour of universal consciousness, and of course the idea is quite appealing. Certainly something for further consideration on my part.

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

I've been editing math and science texts which contain eigenvalues, and bizarre copolymers! I sometimes wish I understood what I was reading, but from my current perspective it looks interesting.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Eigenvalues! I remember those critters back in first year discrete mathematics. You can have quite a party with them. :)

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I love the Australian Synchrotron. (Didn't they have some sorts of management issues a while back, though?)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

They sure did! A scientifically illiterate part of the board was under the strong opinion that the sync could be a self-funding organisation - a position contrary to the basic economic theory of positive externalities and borne out in fact, insofar there isn't a single synch in experience which does this. This spilled over into industrial action.

I believe all of this has been resolved with a few top-level changes...