Wednesday, November 30th, 2005

Time	Event
9:14a	computer research at UCD Groves of Academe UCSD Scientist Computing a Theory of Theories This graphic shows the results of a circular “computational automaton” computer model after 100 cycles. Image Credit: James Crutchfield, University of California, Davis A University of California, Davis researcher received one of the most powerful computers of its type as a gift from Sun Microsystems Inc., and he's using it to construct simulations called cellular automata and investigate how theories are developed. The computer that Sun donated to professor James Crutchfield is known as Colony. It has 14 motherboards that have 64 chips each, and each chip contains 64 32-bit processors, for a total of 57,344 processors. But what makes Colony special is the speed of the connections between its processors - it can run simulations thousands of times faster than conventional machines. A simple cellular automaton would be a lattice of cells, each of which can be in a set number of states, such as black or white, one or zero. Colony can run very large lattices and also run models in three or four dimensions, making for more powerful and realistic models, says Crutchfield. He has developed a new theory of how cellular automata can spontaneously organize into miniature universes with their own unique structures. The ultimate goal is to understand how structure can appear at different levels of the universe, how the levels are related and how scientists (and computers) can automatically construct theories from data. from here: http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/hardware/story/0,10801,106356,00.html?source=NLT_HW2&nid=106356 n.b.: 'ucsd' actually means 'uc san diego', but crutchfield does work at davis. he's pretty awesome. (Comment on this)
10:01a	Romanian libraries In light of my visit to the Romanian National Library in Bucharest last summer, I was fascinated when I ran across an article on the history and development of Romanian libraries, and whether the state of Romanian libraries is an indication of Romania's readiness to join the EU. The basic conclusion of the article: they're in sad shape. An excerpt: "The vast majority of large Romanian libraries are closed stacks. Only a very limited number of libraries have an online catalog (more on this issue in the section “Infrastructure”). Reference services as they are known in the northern European countries and on the North American continent are almost nonexistent. A very limited number of county libraries have Internet connections. They allow user access to the Internet for a fee or free of charge. Very few of these libraries offer mediated searches to their clients. One of the reasons is that the librarians are not trained on how to search the Internet efficiently and how to evaluate effectively the information available on the World Wide Web." Anghelescu, Hermina G.B. "European Integration: Are Romanian Libraries Ready?" Libraries & Culture, Vol. 40, No. 3, Summer 2005. (2 Comments | Comment on this)

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