A s scientific instruments become ever more powerful, from orbiting observatories to genomesequencing machines, they are making their fields data-rich but analysis-poor. Ground-based telescopes in digital sky surveys are currently pouring several hundred terabytes (10 12 bytes) of data per year into dozens of archives, enough to keep astronomers busy for decades. The four satellites of NASA's Earth Observing System currently beam down 1000 terabytes annually, far more than earth scientists can hope to calibrate and analyze. And looming on the horizon is the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest physics experiment, now under construction at CERN, Europe's particle physics lab near Geneva. Soon after it comes online in 2007, each of the five detectors will be spewing out several petabytes (10 15 bytes) of data-about a million DVDs' worth-every year. These and similar outpourings of information are overwhelming the available computing power. Few researchers have access to the powerful supercomputers that could make inroads into such vast data sets, so they are trying to be more creative. Some are parceling big computing jobs into small work packages and distributing them to underused computers on the Internet. With this strategy, insurmountable tasks may soon become manageable. One approach to such "distributed computing" was pioneered by computer scientists working with SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The phenomenally successful SETI@home program now makes use of the idle computer time of millions of ordinary computer users, working as a screen saver to quietly crunch away at radio-signal data from deep space. As John Bohannon describes on p. 810, the same screensaver technique is now being used by a wide array of researchers studying everything from climate change to gravitational waves and protein folding. Bohannon also delves into the strange tribal world (p. 812) of the "crunchers": computer enthusiasts whose goal is to become the most prolific processors of data for various screen-saver research projects. And on p. 813, Mark Buchanan samples a piece of computer navel gazing: a distributed computing project to study the geography of the Internet itself. Another way of distributing both data and computing power, known as grid computing, taps the Internet to put petabyte processing on every researcher's desktop. On p. 814, Foster highlights the development of a lingua franca of grid computing: a set of standardized interfaces and protocols that permits researchers to work across the Web. Hey and Trefethen (p. 818) describe the U.K.-based e-Science program to design plug-and-play grid technologies for a range of disciplines. And Buetow (p. 822) outlines the ways in which cyberinfrastructure can weld together the vastly different styles of biomedical research. For all the excitement, however, there are disturbing trends in the directions being taken by funding agencies that have historically been involved with driving the Internet revolution. In their Editorial (p. 757), Lazowska and Patter...
The photochemical decomposition of semiconducting electrodes and the effects of charge exchange to redox species in solution have been studied by means of the Mirage Effect. Spectroscopic use of this method permits the detection of surface films and diffusion coefficients of redox ions generated by charge exchange at metal electrodes have been measured using the refractive index changes associated with these reactions
Calcium carbonate provides good optical properties to graphic paper and is relatively inexpensive. Therefore, the use of calcium carbonate for the production of paper has steadily increased. But the high amount of calcium carbonate in paper for recycling and the closure of water circuits leads to a high concentration of calcium ions in the process water of paper mills. The consequence can be undesired precipitation and deposition of calcium carbonate in machines and plant components of the mills. Enhanced knowledge about the precipitation potential of calcium carbonate is needed to avoid or reduce undesired precipitation and deposition. The potential can be described using the Langelier saturation index (LSI). Our investigations showed that a deposition of calcium carbonate only happens if the LSI value is higher than 0.5. An LSI value above 0.5 often exists in process water that is treated in a biological effluent treatment plant. Reasons for such values are the increase in hydrogen carbonate concentration (m-alkalinity) by carbon dioxide production and the increase of the pH value by reduction of fatty acids. With the knowledge about the precipitation potential of calcium carbonate in a process water line, suitable measures could be implemented.
Second harmonic generation (SHG) and surface-enhanced Kaman scattering (SERS) are used to examine the phthalazinesilver electrode interface over a wide potential range. The SHG signal is found to exhibit hysteresis negative of the potential of zero charge, in contrast to SERS, which shows the expected irreversible degradation of signal. Hysteresis in the second harmonic signal is likely the result of anion-mediated reorientation of phthalazine.
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