Focus
on Research
Penn State Intercom......October
17, 2002
University deploys
Lion-XL, a
high-performance computing cluster 
This month, Academic Services and Emerging Technologies (ASET) deployed its third-generation Linux cluster, Lion-XL, to help solve complex computational problems for research projects in a variety of departments including biology, chemistry, meteorology and physics.
Clusters (many computers networked together) are rapidly gaining momentum as a cost-competitive approach to scientific and engineering computing. A cluster of computers, or "compute servers," combined with scheduling software to distribute the computing tasks, allows standard and readily available equipment to offer computational speeds comparable to far more expensive proprietary computer systems.
Lion-XL is the fastest and most powerful cluster Penn State has built to date, in which 80 compute servers have been linked together with fast ethernet and an additional high-speed network from Quadrics, a company based in the United Kingdom. Lion-XL has a peak computing capacity rated at 400 GigaFlops, roughly 400 times faster than an average desktop machine.
The University's clusters, Lion-XE and Lion-XL, are a collaborative partnership among several faculty members spanning three colleges and ASET, a unit of Information Technology Services (ITS). The partnership is aimed at consolidating and therefore increasing the resource available to each participant, as well as decreasing the duplication of efforts inherent in smaller systems.
"Instead of individual research groups deploying small clusters in their labs, it's far more productive to build larger machines," said Vijay Agarwala, director of high-performance computing and visualization at ITS/ASET. "Larger machines, when properly run, significantly lower the total cost of operating these resources."
This collaborative partnership is open to all faculty members. The high-performance computing group seeks to expand Lion-XL to 256 compute servers in the future. For more information on using these new resources, or to learn how to become a partner, check the Web at http://gears.aset.psu.edu/.
WUN's first year marked by
brisk international activity
By Barbara Hale
Public
Information
In the spring and summer this year, the Materials Research Institute, under the direction of Carlo Pantano, arranged or participated in three teleconference seminars through the Worldwide University Network (WUN) program. Two were presented by British faculty members and one by Thomas Mallouk, professor of chemistry. As a direct result of the Mallouk seminar, a graduate student from Bristol University is currently working with him at University Park for six weeks this semester on assembly of metallic nanowires.
Penn State is a founding member of WUN, a partnership of 11 research universities in the United States and Britain formed in April 2001. The partnership fosters exchanges and research cooperation in seven focus areas: materials; oceanography and climatology; bioinformatics; acoustics; globalization and geography of the new economy; public policy and management; and outreach and distance education. Recently, two Chinese universities joined the group.
Gary Miller, associate vice president for outreach and distance education, is working on three WUN distributed learning projects. York University is developing a master of public policy degree program with faculty members from WUN institutions contributing content. Penn State Harrisburg faculty members Steven Peterson, professor of politics, and Jeremy Plant, professor of public administration and public policy, are contributing content. Discussions also are ongoing about a program in bioinformatics and a degree program in geographic information systems to be led by Penn State and the University of Leeds.
"The National Science Foundation is interested in nurturing these types of exchanges and our participation in WUN provides a ready vehicle to respond to NSF's goals," said Eva Pell, vice president for research and dean of The Graduate School. Pell is WUN's contact at the University.
Three graduate students in advanced materials are spending time this fall at the universities of Southampton and Sheffield. Three are working in geography at the University of Bristol and one student is studying public policy at the University of York. In addition, three British students from the universities of Leeds, York and Bristol are studying bioinformatics, public policy and advanced materials here. Earlier this year, a student from Sheffield spent a month working here on advanced materials.
Funds to support the Penn State students' exchanges came from their department, unit or college along with funds from central administration.
"This year, the University's central administration will once again make available $40,000 to support WUN exchanges," said Robert McGrath, associate vice president for research, who is facilitating the student exchanges. "As we did last year, colleges, units and departments will be asked to provide dollar-for-dollar match support, bringing the University's total support for WUN exchanges to $80,000. Match resources may come from any source, including general funds or existing grants under which exchanges with our U.K. collaborating institutions already have been defined. We expect these resources to support six to 12 exchange programs."
The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) soon will release to college and research unit offices a request for proposals on matching funds for Worldwide University Network (WUN) exchanges during 2003. Faculty members and their graduate students interested in participating in WUN exchanges should develop their proposals and transmit them via their college/unit offices to OVPR by Nov. 18.
Foster gets award to evaluate
child intervention programs
E. Michael Foster, associate professor of health policy and administration and a faculty member in the Children, Youth and Families Consortium, has received a five-year, $2.8 million grant from the National Institute on Mental Health to complete an economic evaluation of Fast-Track, a comprehensive, multi-site intervention program designed to prevent chronic antisocial behavior in children.
The grant will allow Foster to evaluate whether costs associated with early interventions with children via Fast-Track program are offset by future savings that result from reductions in delinquency and other costly societal behaviors. The evaluation will identify the economic impact of the interventions, calculate the cost effectiveness of key outcomes, project future costs of care and identify sub-groups of participants for whom the Fast-Track interventions were especially significant, either positively or negatively. The evaluation focuses on the experiences of 891 high-risk children who were randomly assigned to Fast-Track or to control groups over a 10-year period. In addition to the children, data is being provided by their teachers, parents, tutors and peers. Preliminary data collected during the first seven years suggests that the Fast-Track intervention has had a positive impact -- children involved in the program tend to have higher academic and social-cognitive skills and fewer discipline problems and special education placements than children in the control groups.