HPCC In Brief

Seminar Videotapes Available

Learning Aeronautics

Internet Connection Made Simple

Sharing NASA

NASA Online

Live Internet Course

Issue 2, May 1997

Text Only F E A T U R E S Striving for Peak Design Students as Astronomers UCLA Climate Models -----RETURN TO COVER----- I N - B R I E F NASA HPCC News -----RETURN TO COVER----- E V E N T S NASA HPCC Recent Events -----RETURN TO COVER-----

Insights is published by the High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) Program Office. Address changes to Judy Conlon or write to: NASA HPCC Insights, Mail Stop 269-3, Moffett Field, California 94035-1000, USA

For a free copy of HPCC videotapes send email to jconlon@mail.arc.nasa.gov and please indicate the exact title and speaker for the video tape you request. Below you will find a very short excerpt from each of these videos saved as a Quicktime movie.

Globus Metacomputing
Speaker: Carl Kesselman, University of Southern California, carl@isi.edu (view seminar clip - under construction)
Globus is a software infrastructure combining distributed, high-end, heterogeneous resources into unique assemblages that are otherwise physically or economically impossible. These metacomputers incorporate not only supercomputers and networks but also mass storage systems, visualization devices and scientific instruments. Globus has communication, I/O and security as core services, on top of which are resource locators and schedulers. Testbeds include the Information Wide Area Year (I-WAY) at the Supercomputing'95 conference and GUSTO, the Globus Ubiquitous Supercomputing Testbed that will ultimately span 20 to 30 sites around the world. See http://www.globus.org for details about Globus.

Stanford Digital Library Project
Speaker: Hector Garcia-Molina, Stanford University, hector@cs.stanford.edu (view seminar clip - under construction)
The Stanford Digital Libraries project is one participant in the 4-year, $24 million Digital Library Initiative, started in 1994 and supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA), and NASA. One aspect of the project is determining the right interface to present the wealth of information that a technical library provides. In addition to an interface, interoperability is key to retrieving all the information. The Stanford Digital Library has ties with five other universities that are part of the project. Stanford also has a large number of industrial partners. Each university project has a different angle on the total project, with Stanford focusing on interoperability. More information about this research, including working papers, is available at http://www-diglib.stanford.edu/diglib/.

Turbulent Dynamics of the Sun
Speaker: Andrea Malagoli, The University of Chicago, a-malagoli@uchicago.edu (view seminar clip - under construction)
This Earth and Space Sciences project Grand Challenge team's high-resolution models point to the interaction of small-scale turbulence with large-scale motions as the fundamental process underlying most of the highly dynamical activity observed on the sun's surface. While parallel machines have enabled the inclusion of non-linear effects crucial for simulating turbulence, these effects alone strain current computers' capabilities. As more powerful systems become available through the NASA HPCC Program, the team will be able to incorporate better representations of the physics. More information about this research, including visualization images and MPEG movies, is available at http://astro.uchicago.edu/Computing.

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Learning Aeronautics by Judy Conlon NASA has awarded $7.1 million to eight educational projects at universities, school districts, and private corporations to develop new information technologies for students in kindergarten through second year of college (K-14) and vocational education. Funded through the HPCC Program as part of the Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications (IITA) project, NASA lauched the agreement, "Education, Training, and Lifelong learning in Aeronautics," in June 1995, drawing the involvement of companies and universities like InfoUse and Tufts University. "We want to fire up students about aeronautics and the Internet. While engaging their minds on these favorite topics, they will also learn about science, mathematics, and engineering," says Mark León, IITA project manager. "The agreement is designed to teach aeronautics at a young age so that the nation offers a better pool of next-generation aeronautical engineers." Early efforts to educate youths on aeronautics may help correct a 30-year shift in losing a major portion of the aeronautical manufacturing industry to foreign competition, according to León. Collaboration on this project has been initiated with major aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing, Cessna, Raytheon and Piper. "We're really excited by the partnerships, diversity of students served, and innovative approaches these projects represent," said William Likens, NASA HPCC deputy program manager. This project helps provide 'high-tech' career paths for children who are physically challenged, geographically remote and living below the poverty line.

Lewis Kraus, InfoUse, meets with student Rasheeda Mahali. For example, InfoUse, through a $1.18 million cooperative agreement, produces pioneering work on accessibility standards for the Internet and World Wide Web for people with disabilities. A major emphasis of the Student Program for Aeronautics Resources and Knowledge (SPARK) program provides Internet connectivity for poor rural youngsters. Among its accomplishments, Idaho SPARK leveraged resources to provide 56 kbps Internet connectivity to three Idaho school districts which serve rural, Native American and disadvantaged youth. Participating projects Aeronautics Learning Laboratory for Science, Technology, and Research Network, Florida International University Aviation Academy, 2000 Memphis City Schools Aeronautics Internet Textbook, Cislunar-Aerospace, Inc. LEGO Data Acquisition and Prototyping System (LDAPS), Tufts University, Plane Math: An Internet-based Curriculum on Math and Aeronautics for Children with Physical Disabilities, InfoUse Corporation Sharing Aeronautics Projects Electronically (SHAPE), Antelope Valley Union High School District Student Program for Aeronautics Resources and Knowledge (SPARK), University of Idaho Take Off! Aeronautics and Aviation Science Careers and Opportunities, Massachusetts Corporation for Educational Telecommunications

As the first step in its Learning Technology Project (LTP) managed by NASA's HPCC Program, NASA employees recently gave Internet kits to 200 San Francisco Bay area schools as part of an alpha test to promote effective use of the Internet in classrooms.

The kits are "an introduction to show how schools can get connected to the Internet and what to do with the service once a connection is established," says Tom Dyson, who is coordinating the kit project for NASA.

Each kit provides innovative ways to use the Internet to increase the use of NASA data and contains a videotape, CD-ROM, and written materials.

LTP advertised an 800 number for additional teachers to order kits. A total of 2000 kits have been distributed so far, reaching two percent of the nation's schools.

Internet kits are now available at cost from NASA CORE. Send email to nasaco@leeca8.leeca.ohio.gov for more information.

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Please join the mail list to stay informed of new Sharing NASA opportunities. To join, simply email listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov. In the message body, write "subscribe sharing-nasa"

See http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/interactive for more information.

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NASA Online
by Judy Conlon

Among the new NASA educational web sites is the Shuttle Team Online. This site, online through May 1997, allows students and other Web surfers to communicate directly with the NASA professionals behind a space shuttle mission. Shuttle Team Online allows persons to interact electronically with a host of NASA personnel as they train astronauts, prepare the shuttle between missions, launch, fly and land the shuttle from Mission Control.

Shuttle Team Online will provide several opportunities to communicate with NASA personnel--email exchange, live network events and WebChats are just part of the action. For teachers, curriculum supplements on rockets and microgravity experiments are available, as well as discussion areas to share ideas. For students, space shuttle simulations allow them to interact with others and display their work relating to the mission.

To join the Shuttle Team Online mail list, simply email listmanager@quest.arc.nasa.gov. In the message body, write "subscribe updates-sto"

See http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/shuttle for more information.

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See the NASA Ames Research Center World Wide Web page for more information on the telerobotics Internet course.