access

Vol 22 No 1 Spring 2009

On the Web

News from NCSA is always available on the Web. Sign up for our RSS feed or email service for the latest developments from NCSA and its partners. www.ncsa.uiuc.edu National Center for Supercomputing Applications University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1205 West Clark Street Urbana, IL 61801 217-244-0072 Blue Waters will benefit from NCSA’s ongoing focus on cyberenvironments, cyber-resources, and innovative systems research. Cyberenvironments give research communities the means to fully exploit the extraordinary resources available on the internet (computing systems, data sources and stores, and tools). Cyber-resources ensure computing, data, and networking resources are available to solve the most demanding science and engineering problems and that the solutions are obtained in a timely manner. Innovative systems research involves testing and evaluating the performance of emerging computing systems for scientific and engineering applications. NCSA also leads efforts to develop a secure national cyberinfrastructure. Through the National Center for Advanced Secure Systems Research, a project funded by the Office of Naval Research, critical cybersecurity and infrastructure needs and research requirements are addressed. In addition, NCSA is a key partner in the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid project, a $150 million effort to offer researchers remote access to some of the fastest unclassified supercomputers as well as an unparalleled array of visualization tools, application software, sensors and instruments, and mass storage devices. The center also leaves its mark through the development of networking, visualization, storage, data management, data mining, and collaboration software. The prime example of this influence is NCSA Mosaic, which was the first graphical Web browser widely available to the general public. NCSA visualizations, meanwhile, have been a part of productions by the likes of PBS’s NOVA and the Discovery Channel. Through its Private Sector Program, top researchers explore the newest hardware and software, virtual prototyping, visualization, networking, and data mining to help U.S. industries maintain a competitive edge in the global economy. Support for NCSA is provided by the National Science Foundation, the state of Illinois, industrial partners, and other federal agencies. For more information, see www.ncsa.uiuc.edu.

Executive Editor J. William Bell jbell@ncsa.uiuc.edu Managing Editor Barbara Jewett barbaraj@ncsa.uiuc.edu Art Director Blake Harvey bharvey@ncsa.uiuc.edu Copy Editor Trish Barker

Who we are

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), one of the five original centers in the National Science Foundation’s Supercomputer Centers Program, opened its doors in January 1986. Over the years NCSA has contributed significantly to the birth and growth of the worldwide cyberinfrastructure for science and engineering, operating some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers and developing the software infrastructure needed to efficiently use them. That tradition continues as the center, Illinois, IBM, and their partners in the Great Lakes Consortium for Petascale Computation develop what is expected to be the first computer dedicated to open scientific research capable of sustaining more than one petaflop, or one quadrillion calculations per second. Called Blue Waters, the system will come online in 2011. It will be dedicated to massive simulations and data analysis projects that will improve our society, health, environment, and economic competitiveness. NCSA and the consortium will also work with research communities to create the new software technologies, scientific applications, and educational programs needed to take full advantage of this new system.

Access Editorial Board Randy Butler Donna Cox Thom Dunning John Melchi Jim Myers Rob Pennington Danny Powell John Towns Bob Wilhelmson

On the cover

A team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Molecular Modeling is changing the way scientists view cholesterol in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR). For years, cholesterol was thought only to be in the outer membrane. Simulations conducted on NCSA’s Abe demonstrated the possibility that the cholesterol, colored yellow, orange, and red, may actually bind to sites within the protein’s transmembrane domain.