Turn off computers tonight

Turn off computers before leaving tonight. A power outage will take place Monday, Oct. 6, and Friday, Oct. 10, from 7-7:25 a.m. in order to replace a 345,000-volt power line that feeds power to the master substation. All buildings and areas that the substation delivers power to, including Wilson Hall, the Lederman Science Center and the Accelerator Complex, will not have power during these two periods. This will not affect power to the Village.

No excuse for under-utilization: Clemson back-fills with BOINC

Clemson University students work on lab computers that contribute computing power to the World Community Grid. Image courtesy of Clemson University.

Clemson University in South Carolina is helping to tackle climate change, muscular dystrophy, cancer and a host of other world problems. The university's School of Computing contributes the unused power of computers in instructional labs to the World Community Grid (WCG), a not-for-profit endeavor sponsored by IBM, which uses the BOINC grid platform.

Before arriving at Clemson, Sebastien Goasguen, assistant professor in the School of Computing, had deployed a campus Condor pool at Purdue University and configured it as an Open Science Grid (OSG) site. Finding about 1500 Windows machines at Clemson, he got the first such pool for Windows running in January 2007.

This pool represents a unique mix of cyberinfrastructure technologies that bring together three types of computing grids-campus (Clemson), national (OSG) and volunteer (BOINC).

"Few grid jobs are tailored for Windows machines. We're able to run some jobs for OSG's 'Engage' Virtual Organization (used by many non-physics research teams) and NanoHUB," says Goasguen who heads up the team of students, professors and Clemson Computing and Information Technology staff. But Clemson's resources were still under-utilized, so his team set up Condor to back-fill with BOINC jobs from the WCG.

"We put in place a multi-tiered job pool guaranteeing that our grid is utilized fully. OSG VOs such as LIGO and the LHC experiments can use our grid in two ways: as "vanilla" OSG jobs and through their respective BOINC projects Einstein@home and LHC@home," he says. )

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-Susan Polowczuk, Clemson University; and Anne Heavey, iSGTW

Have a safe day!

Photos wanted for labwide party
At the labwide party on Oct. 17, a slideshow on the video screen in the atrium will show images of people at Fermilab. We are looking for additional photos of you and your colleagues here at work--in your office or work area, at a department picnic, during lunch in the cafeteria, etc. Please e-mail your jpeg files to lwp08@fnal.gov by Friday, Oct. 10. Depending on the number of photos we will receive, we might not be able to include every photo in the slideshow.

Volunteers needed: Show your (artistic) muscles
The Fermilab Arts & Lecture Series needs some help for a couple of hours on Saturday, Oct. 4, at 9 a.m. to carry equipment and set up the stage for the Aquila Theatre's production of Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors" in Ramsey Auditorium. Volunteers will receive two free tickets for Saturday evening's performance. We also need someone to help with costume changes backstage during the performance, which begins at 8 p.m. Email mackay@fnal.gov as soon as possible if you would like to volunteer. For regular tickets, call 630-840-2787. More information

George Winston piano concert coming
The Fermilab Arts Series presents George Winston at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 19, in Ramsey Auditorium. Winston's solo piano concert features music from his melodic seasonal recordings, Vince Guaraldi's Peanuts pieces, New Orleans R & B piano, stride piano, and more, including pieces from his latest CD, "Gulf Coast Blues and Impressions: A Hurricane Relief Benefit." Tickets are $25 for adults and $13 for those 18 and younger. For reservations, call (630) 840-2787 weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, see www.fnal.gov/culture.

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