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Parallel processing on a chip

Many businesses are now using desktop computers linked together to replace their old mainframe systems. These machines divide up complex problems into smaller ‘chunks’ which are then fed to the desktop computers.

Larger parallel supercomputers – such as the Tera computer – cost millions and are used mostly for defence work. IBM believes with Patent 5717943 that it has developed a chip which could produce the same power (if not more) for a fraction of the cost.

The chip is called the Advanced Parallel Array Processor (APAP) and has a number of features which make it unique:

The APAP chip only dissipates 2 watts of energy compared to 60 watts for an Intel Pentium.

Existing parallel computers such as the transputer, are difficult to program. The APAP uses the same common software development tools for all its designs.

The design can be adapted for any size from a watch to a truly massive supercomputer.

The low heat dispersion of APAP means that many chips can be built close together – even on the same silicon wafer – without the computer suffering any cooling problems.

Ministers cut Framework budget

The European Commission had proposed a budget of ECU 16.3 billion for the framework, which will run from 1998 to 2002, while the European Parliament had voted for ECU 16.7 billion. The figure agreed by the research ministers is lower than the ECU 14.5 billion budget for the Fourth Framework. The Framework requires approval from the European Parliament before it can be launched and the parliament is expected to press for an increase in the budget. The European Commission, meanwhile, is unhappy with the changes to the structure of the Framework proposed by the research ministers

Shake-up in American science

Lane has been director of the NSF since October 1993. Prior to that he was a professor of physics at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in physics from the University of Oklahoma. Lane has been associated with Rice for most of his career, with leaves of absence at Belfast and Oxford in the UK and at the NSF as director of the physics division.

Gibbons will probably be best remembered for two projects – the Stockpile Stewardship programme, and for expanding US international scientific partnerships. The former is to ensure the safety and reliability of US nuclear stockpiles. The Large Hadron Collider agreement with CERN is an example of the latter.

Prior to joining the OSTP, Gibbons served for 13 years as director of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. Previously he had worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and at the University of Tennessee.

Colwell has served on the US National Science Board, and has been president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Lane is expected to continue pushing for realistic increases in the science budget. He is quoted as saying: “It is hardly news that the earlier ‘golden era’ is long over. We can no longer expect public support for science and engineering research in the form of a blank check and an undefined agenda.”

Science fiction to the rescue of teaching?

At the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Philadelphia today, Leroy Dubeck from Temple University presented a lecture on teaching science with the help of science fiction.

Science fiction movies are well known for breaking physical laws, and although Scotty, the chief engineer on Star Trek, frequently protested that he “could not break the laws of physics”, the spaceship itself frequently did. This has not stopped books that explain the physics behind the series becoming extremely popular.

Dubeck has published books on the use of movies to teach science. His most recent book – Fantastic Voyages: Learning Science through Science Fiction Films – described the fundamental principles of physics through movies such as The Day the Earth Caught Fire and 2010 . In his AAAS lecture he used Star Trek: the Next Generation to explain the Greenhouse Effect, and Star Wars to discuss the physics of outer space.

Usually Dubeck employs the movies to teach physics to arts students who require a core physics unit as part of their degree. Over 150 students enrol in such courses. He also teaches a specialized non-core science course Science and Science Fiction in Film to a much smaller class.

Dubeck has found that by teaching students through science fiction instead of traditional techniques, students gain a better understanding of the scientific principles. As an additional benefit, students seem to retain interest in the course throughout the semester, and class enrollment is higher than normal.

Support has also come from the National Science Foundation (NSF) which has helped develop a series of textbooks that use the scheme, though not all lecturers are convinced of the benefit of such methods. “Some colleagues like the technique while others consider it too gimmicky” said Dubeck.

In the UK, Jon Ogborn, director of the 16-19 physics initiative at the Institute of Physics, believes that the use of science fiction could help reverse the fall in the number of students studying physics. “Setting science within interesting narratives is crucial to keeping students involved” he says.

Other lecturers are equally surprised at the level of interest generated by talks based on the science of films. At a recent meeting of the Bristol Astronomical Society, nearly 100 people turned up to hear a talk on The Astrophysics of Star Trek given by Tino Canosa, a postgraduate student at Bristol University. “I can’t remember the last time members of an audience actually asked for a lecture to be extended” said Canosa.

Do you have views on using science fiction to teach science? Write to the editor

Magnetic heat engines

Magnetic heat engines have been known about since 1889, but the success of gas engines has largely prevented research into this technology. Magnetic engines work by converting heat directly into electricity by taking advantage of temperature differentials to change the strength of magnetic fields. Changes in the magnetic field generate electricity.

The growth of semiconductor devices has increased interest in magnetic heat engines because circuits in such devices have to be cooled to stop the chips overheating. Only magnetic heat engines are responsive enough to cope with sudden changes in temperature. Mechanical fluid systems would be too slow or bulky to protect the chip.

Guruprasad’s invention in Patent 5714829 has the advantage of being small, and having none of the moving parts that are usually found inside normal engines, which increases its reliability.

Guruprasad believes his devices are best suited for new types of fluid-free refrigerators, heating elements in cookers, and for the cooling of digital circuits.

Amplification of matter waves

Bose-Einstein condensation itself was only observed for the first time in 1995. There has been intense interest in the process ever since because of the unique quantum behaviour displayed by matter in the condensate, and because of the possibility of building an atom laser. Just as a conventional laser relies on the stimulated emission of photons from atoms, an atom laser relies on “bosonic stimulation” for the amplification of matter waves. Hans-Joachim Miesner and colleagues publish their evidence for such stimulation in Science this week (279 1005-1007).

Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) was first predicted by Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose in 1924. To produce a Bose-Einstein condensate in the laboratory it is necessary to trap and cool a gas to atoms to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. The MIT team uses laser cooling and a magneto-optical trap. When the gas is cold enough, the de Broglie wavelength of the atoms is comparable with the inter-atom spacing and they all collapse or “condense” into the same quantum state.

In the MIT experiment a gas of sodium atoms is cooled to just above the temperature for the onset of BEC, and then suddenly quenched to below the transition temperature. By following the formation of the condensate with a non-destructive imaging technique, and comparing the experimental data with a series of theoretical models, the team observe evidence for bosonic stimulation.

Miesner and colleagues find that the condensate actually grows more quickly than predicted by theory and think that this might be due to saturation phenomenon. “The condensate growth might be limited by the supply of thermal atoms [atoms not in the condensate state] which are locally depleted by the presence of large condensate fractions” he says. It is also possible that improvement in both theory and experiment will be needed to resolve the difference, he suggests.

Miesner says that since the work was submitted to Science, the group has confirmed their results using a more sophisticated analysis technique. But, he adds, “the question about the build-up of coherence during the formation remains to be unresolved.”

Missiles by day, planets at night

The $40 million Magdalena Ridge Observatory will use optical interferometry to merge light signals from three new telescopes into a single image. Researchers also hope to test new adaptive optics techniques in a attempt to reduce the effect of atmospheric turbulence. Using these methods the observatory should produce images sharper than those obtained from the Hubble Space Telescope at a fraction of the cost.

The observatory is being funded by the US Army who hope to use the telescope to observe missiles from the White Sands Missile Range.

The task of building and managing the observatory has been given to the New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology (New Mexco Tech). The institute is part of the consortium that first proposed the facility to the army. According to Van Romero, vice president for research at New Mexico Tech, “this type of facility will become a tremendous resource.”

The telescope will be unusual in that it will operate 24 hours a day. The military will use it during the day to observe missile tests, and universities will use it for astronomy at night. Researchers based in New Mexico hope to use the telescope to study extrasolar planets.

Newsbytes: Galileo and aliens

Galileo declassified

The Vatican has finally made public its archives, after four and a half centuries of secrecy. Scholars will be able to access files relating to figures such as Galileo, up to the beginning of this century. The official announcement of the Vatican’s decision was made at a meeting organized by the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome last month.

US supports search for aliens

One sixth of American adults are willing to pay more taxes to fund a search for extraterrestrial life, according to a recent survey. This is twice the percentage willing to devote tax receipts to cloning. Moreover, 99% of the 1000 respondents are prepared to pay more taxes to support inventions in general. The survey was conducted by the Lemelson-MIT awards programme, an organization that supports invention and innovation, and is affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Nuclear firms prepare for merger

The merger between Magnox Electric and British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) should be complete within a year, creating a new group with a combined turnover of £1.8 bn and almost 18 000 staff, including 3900 scientists. The move will save the government at least £1.1 bn, but it will still have to pay the merged firms at least £3.7 bn to cover nuclear liabilities.

BNFL, the more successful of the two firms, is mainly responsible for reprocessing spent fuel, decommissioning redundant nuclear power stations and managing and disposing of nuclear waste. With 13 000 staff, a US subsidiary and offices around the world, it made a profit of £116 m on a turnover of £1262 m in 1996/97.

Magnox Electric – the smaller partner with just 3700 staff – is an electricity generator. It operates six old-style Magnox power stations, which generated about 6.5% of the total UK electricity output in 1996. It made a pre-tax loss of £68 m in 1996/97 on a turnover of £568 m.

The two companies already have close links. Indeed, most of Magnox Electric’s expenditure is on fuel, reprocessing and waste management services that are provided by BNFL. The government believes that merging the two companies will be more efficient than continuing to run them separately. John Battle, the minister for energy and science, says the merger will “bring together the financial and management responsibilities for these processes to create better incentives for securing cost reductions”. But sharing technical and commercial expertise in this way could put jobs at risk. Although a BNFL spokesman says it is too early to know if there will be any job losses, he adds that some duplication between jobs will be “inevitable”.

Expected cost savings from merging the companies also mean that the government will only have to pay the merged firm £3.7 bn to help to meet its nuclear liabilities over the next hundred years – a saving of £600 m on the deal agreed by the previous government with Magnox Electric in 1996. BNFL has also agreed to absorb another £500 m of Magnox Electric’s liabilities that the government had previously agreed to cover, bringing the total government saving to £1.1 bn. And BNFL has said that any additional savings that the company makes on its clean-up bill will be shared with the government, up to a maximum of £800 m.

Magnox Electric will initially be a wholly owned subsidiary of BNFL, before forming part of a new business group called Magnox Generation that will also include two other Magnox power stations currently owned by BNFL. Provided that BNFL can win permission to run Magnox Electric’s operations from various regulatory authorities, the merger of the two companies should be complete within a year.

Clinton backs US research

The good news is contained in the budget request for the fiscal year 1999 (FY99), which begins in October. The National Science Foundation will receive 10% more than this year, while science and technology at the Department of Energy is in line for a 3% rise. However, the request contains bad news for NASA – a cut of 3%. Funding for applied research across all government agencies will rise by 5%, while the total amount of research money that reaches universities is due to increase by 6%.

The director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), Neal Lane, called the request “an unprecedented vote of confidence in the Foundation and in the importance of investing in science and engineering.” Of the $3773m requested for the NSF, $792m is ear-marked for the division of mathematical and physical sciences – an increase of 10.6%.

The Department of Energy (DOE) hopes to receive $18bn in FY99, an increase of 8.9% overall. Some $2.7bn of this will go on science and technology, with the rest being spent on energy resources ($2.3bn), national security ($6.1bn) and environmental quality ($6.7bn). The president has also requested $157m to start construction of the Spallation Neutron Source at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Construction of the £1.3bn source is expected to take 7 years and will be funded by the basic energy sciences programme at the DOE. Funding for basic energy sciences will be increased from $665m to $836m to fund the source. Elsewhere within the DOE funding for high-energy physics will increase from $678m to $691m (up 2%), while support for nuclear physics is due to rise from $320m to $333m (up 4%). However, funding for magnetic fusion is set to fall slightly to $228m.

At NASA funding for the International Space Station will remain static at $2272m, while support for space science will fall from $2093m to $2057m – a drop of 1.7%.

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