To build tomorrow's quantum computers, some researchers are turning to dark excitons, which are bound pairs of an electron and the absence of an electron called a hole. As a promising quantum bit, or qubit, it can store information in its spin state, analogous to how a regular, classical bit stores information in its off or on state. But one problem is that dark excitons do not emit light, making it hard to determine their spins and use them for quantum information processing. Read further...

Stealth Grid, a U.S.-based security, encryption, and blockchain pioneer has formally signed a partnership with MVP Asia Pacific to deliver the holy grail of data privacy and encryption. Quantum computing is on the horizon and will soon be a reality which will bring advancements in medical and environmental areas. The stark reality is that quantum computing brings to the forefront that every secret is likely to be revealed. Read further...

The HPC Advisory Council (HPCAC), a for community benefit, member-based organisation dedicated to advancing high-performance computing (HPC) research, education and collaboration through global outreach, has announced the Swiss Annual HPC Conference taking place in Lugano, Switzerland, April 9-12 2018, hosted by the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS). For the first time, the conference will be held in concert with the Winter HPCXXL User Group meeting. Read further...

TETRAMAX is a new European H2020 project that aims to promote innovation by supporting various types of technology transfer experiments between academia and SMEs. Today, we stand at the verge of a new wave of innovation, characterised by the digitisation of all sectors of industry. By investing in innovation actions such as TETRAMAX, which focuses on customized, low-energy computing technology, Europe has the potential to strengthen its competitive position. Read further...

Albert Gutiérrez, from BSC Fusion Group, has been awarded with a prestigious EUROfusion Engineering Grant (EEG) for his project entitled Software Engineering: Development of High Performance Computing capability for fusion workflows, integrated to the ITER Modelling framework. The grant starts on January 1st 2018 and will have a duration of three years. This year more than 40 people applied and 20 people were selected for EEG. Read further...

The team from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya / Barcelona Tech (UPC) will compete for the fourth time in the ISC-HPCAC Student Cluster Competition (SCC), that will take place during the 2018 edition of the ISC High Performance conference, June 25-27, 2018, in Frankfurt, Germany. Twelve teams from all over the world will be vying for recognition in the annual ISC-HPCAC SCC. This competition focuses on testing students' skills through hands-on challenges in High Performance Computing (HPC) disciplines. It works as a catalyst, inspiring novel ideas and highly innovative approaches, while instilling a healthy competitive spirit and camaraderie, resulting in lasting friendships amongst participants. Read further...

The Netherlands eScience Center has initiated fourteen new collaborative projects in the areas of Environment & Sustainability, Life Sciences & eHealth, Physics & Beyond and Disruptive Computer & Data Science. Read further...

In a report entitled "Top science requires top infrastructure", the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) advises the new government to make an extra 27 million euro per year available for the Netherlands' national digital infrastructure. According to the NWO Committee who produced the report, this is essential if the country is to remain among the best in the world in this area and if it is to meet Dutch researchers' growing need for digital infrastructures. Read further...

Two research teams at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) have been selected for a HiPEAC Tech Transfer Award 2017. Read further...

Imagine being able to write an application once and have it scheduled from Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to data centres and supercomputers, all while making the most energy-efficient use of the hardware available. This is the main challenge the European project LEGaTO - Low Energy Toolset for Heterogeneous Computing - will tackle over three years of research. The project, which has a budget of over 5 million euro and is coordinated by Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), kicked off December 14-15, 2017 in Barcelona. Read further...

The Flemish Ministry of Employment, Economy, Innovation and Sports will invest 30 million euro in a new supercomputer. Read further...

Ace Computers has just introduced four leading-edge OpenStack applications for clusters, servers and workstations. Although the company has been working with top open source application providers for decades - this is the first announcement of an offering portfolio that includes Red Hat, SUSE, Bright Computing and CentOS. Read further...

The HPC Advisory Council (HPCAC), a for community benefit, member-based organisation dedicated to advancing high-performance computing (HPC) research, education and collaboration through global outreach, and Stanford University have announced that the 2018 HPCAC-Stanford Conference will take place February 20-21 2018, at Stanford University's Munger Conference Center/Paul Brest Hall. The annual California-based conference draws world-class experts from all over the world for two days of thought leadership talks and immersive tutorials focusing on emerging trends with extensive coverage of AI, Data Sciences, HPC, Machine Learning and more. Read further...

A new type of neural network made with memristors can dramatically improve the efficiency of teaching machines to think like humans. The network, called a reservoir computing system, could predict words before they are said during conversation, and help predict future outcomes based on the present. Read further...

After separating from IDC earlier this year when IDC's parent company was sold to China Oceanwide Holdings Group and IDG Capital, the former IDC high performance computing (HPC) market analyst group has moved intact into an independent new company called Hyperion Research Holdings, LLC - the same name the well-known group used during the interim period when it was searching for a new U.S.-based owner. Read further...

The China Regional Committee (CRC) of the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation has successfully concluded its 2nd Symposium in Beijing. The CRC was formed earlier this year; its mandate is to enhance the awareness of heterogeneous computing and promote the adoption of standards such as Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) in China. Read further...

Jian Peng, NCSA Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Illinois and graduate student, Yang Liu, Department of Computer Science, have discovered a major breakthrough in protein structure predictions using deep learning data processed by NCSA's Blue Waters supercomputer published inCell Systemsjournal. Read further...

Over the course of nearly two decades, NASA's Terra satellite has exceeded many of its expectations from the time of its launch. Blue Waters professor at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Larry Di Girolamo, who was in his first year of graduate school studying atmospheric sciences when Terra was conceived, has literally watched the Earth change before his very eyes with Terra. Read further...

Some secrets to repair our skeletons might be found in the silky webs of spiders, according to recent experiments guided by supercomputers. Scientists involved say their results will help understand the details of osteoregeneration, or how bones regenerate. Read further...

In order to more fully comprehend the complexities of Earth's interior, humanity has to dig deep - literally. To date, scientists have been able to bore a little over 12 kilometres deep, or about half the average depth of the Earth's crust. Read further...

Recent stories in the national media are magnifying fears of a catastrophic eruption of the Yellowstone volcanic area, but scientists remain uncertain about the likelihood of such an event. To better understand the region's subsurface geology, University of Illinois geologists have rewound and played back a portion of its geologic history, finding that Yellowstone volcanism is more far more complex and dynamic than previously thought. Read further...

As of December 18, DeepHack.Babel hackathon has opened the registration for the qualification round. From January 29 until February 4, 50 participants that pass the test will have a chance to apply their knowledge to improve machine translation technology. The deadline for the qualification round is January 8, 2018. This is the fifth in a series of DeepHack events organized by Neural Networks and Deep Learning lab at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). This year, the hackathon will focus on machine translation, with a special emphasis on neural machine translation (NMT) - a method that is gaining popularity among researchers and has already found commercial application. As usual, the event will also host a sci-hack school. Read further...

A total of nine universities and research centres have carried out the Spanish Research Network for Cardiac Computational Modelling - "Red Española de Investigación en Modelización Computacional Cardiaca", in Spanish - under the acronym V-Heart SN. This network is intended to make the use of virtual hearts easier by employing computational models in daily clinical practice, which will allow doctors to design personalized and more effective and safer therapies. Read further...

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) participates in a study published in Nucleic Acids Research that points to new biomarkers that might help in the early detection of Parkinson and multiple system atrophy (MSA), as well as in exploring possible treatments. Read further...

Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and PIMEC are to establish a collaboration framework to promote the innovation of small companies through Supercomputing. BSC's Director, Mateo Valero, and Antoni Cañete, General Secretary at PIMEC, have signed a collaboration agreement which aims at improving competitiveness of companies through the development of solutions on Machine Learning, Big Data, Neuronal Networks and Artificial Intelligence applied to business cases of a small size. BSC research in these fields will allow to promote national industry, improve the generation of new opportunities for citizens in the entrepreneurship field, as well as to boost public-private collaboration. Read further...

Alexander Blass of the University of Twente has won the Visualization Competition 2017 with a visualization of direct numerical simulations of sheared thermal convection. The prize was awarded at the Super D Event on December 12, 2017. Read further...

Health research enables the development of personalized approaches in health care and medicine. SURF supports the mission of Health RI, the Dutch infrastructure for personalized medicine and health research. At the 3rd Health RI conference, SURF presented interconnected access and analytics solutions for shared data and applications. Read further...

SONM, the Decentralized Supercomputer Platform, has released its Minimum Viable Product (MVP) on Christmas Day, providing an early present for those excited to see a preview of its massive potential. Mountain View Capital has added SOMN as its latest portfolio company. SONM, which is short for Supercomputer Organized by Network Mining, is using blockchain technology to assemble the world's largest decentralized supercomputer. Instead of using mining power to process blockchain transactions and "mine" new tokens, SONM's decentralized network uses that processing power to solve large problems and calculations that are far too complex for one single computer in the network. Read further...

Oracle has entered into an agreement with Aconex Limited, a Cloud-based solution that manages team collaboration for construction projects, for A$7.80 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately US$1.2 billion, net of Aconex cash. Read further...