Employing a lively magazine format, NCSA RealTime features video reports on the burgeoning field of high-performance computing and its applications to science, engineering, education, and the arts and humanities. Each edition consists of four segments, totaling 26-28 minutes and covering a cross-section of center activities: from research projects, collaborations and technical development to the training and education of supercomputer users.
NCSA RealTime is targeted at the following groups: the scientific research community (universities, NCSA affiliates, scientific institutes, national laboratories and other supercomputer centers), corporations (including NCSA Industrial Partners), computer vendors, the education community (from K-12 through college and postgraduate levels) and the media.
Currently, NCSA RealTime is being distributed to approximately 400 NCSA contacts among these communities. The video magazine is also broadcast by some local PBS stations and cable TV systems. And copies (3/4 inch, betacam, 8 mm cassettes) are available for purchase: contact Documentation Orders at 217-244-4130 or email docorder@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Internet) or docorder@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Bitnet).
A complete listing of stories produced to date follows.
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NCSA RealTime #1
Ñ A Mummy Unveiled! An Egyptian mummy╒s interior revealed through volume renderings.
This story explores the coupling of medical instrumentation to high performance computing by NCSA╒s Biomedical Imaging Group. The emerging 3-D software tools promise to improve medical imaging.
Ñ Megabytes to Medicines. How Eli Lilly and Company learned the art and science of supercomputing and brought it back home.
The segment highlights molecular modelling of drug receptor interactions on a CRAY supercomputer. Aided by high performance computing, Lilly researchers aim to speed up the discovery and design of tomorrow╒s medicines.
Ñ Seeing is Believing. The human factor in scientific visualization.
University of Illinois aviation researchers collaborate with NCSA╒s visualization specialists to develop new visualization paradigms. Their aims are to optimize 3-D displays and to develop more effective visualization tools for both the pilot and scientist.
Ñ Microburst Alert. Real-time weather modelling in the service of airline safety.
University of Wisconsin Space Science and Engineering scientists are prototyping tomorrow╒s real-time local forecasting capabilities. Employing NCSA╒s Cray-2 supercomputer remotely and drawing on same day atmospheric data, the researchers are modelling small-scale storms that pose severe hazards to aviation. The aim is to predict severe weather phenomena ahead of time and thus aid air traffic safety.
NCSA RealTime #2
Ñ A New Proving Ground. Visualize! Then materialize! Design tools that could cut costs.
Working with visualization experts at NCSA, Caterpillar, Inc. aims to prototype a new breed of earth-diggers. 3-D animations simulate the operator╒s field of view and allow engineers to test their designs on-screen before making expensive mock-ups.
Ñ Sounding the Data. Scientists gain insight into their numbers╤but not by pictures alone.
Changes of color and motion help us recognize patterns in data. But how about sound? According to a team at NCSA, it╒s a question well worth exploring. The sounds that they are experimenting with, though, are not in the least bit musical but are generated from the same data that drive their scientific visualizations.
Ñ Music by Numbers. How to use a Cray to make music to match the complexity of our world.
At the University of Illinois School of Music a unique collaboration is taking shape. Here, composers employ a CRAY Y-MP to create entirely new patterns of sound. Combining randomness and order, the resulting music challenges traditional forms and the clockwork universe they reflect.
Ñ Vision for Learning. Scientific publishing with a difference.
Visualization is fast becoming essential to communicating the results of science, particularly computational science. You wouldn╒t think so, though, if you had to plow through stacks of research journals. For David Ruzic, a University of Illinois plasma physicist, it╒s time to let pictures do more of the talking. The result: a video textbook.
NCSA RealTime #3
Ñ A Picture of Health. A unified format for medical imaging.
NCSA╒s cameras visit Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. Here, doctors employ the latest version of NCSA HDF 4.0, a public domain software tool produced by the Software Tools Group, to archive and distribute radiologic images throughout the hospital--thus saving doctors time and enabling them to better diagnose their patient╒s ailments.
Ñ An Eye to Science. Insights into how we see and learn.
A portrait of Klaus Schulten, a biophysicist at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, who, by exploiting the massively parallel processing power of the Connection Machine, aims to discover the building blocks of vision and learning.
Ñ Probing the Bounty. 3-D imaging aids the Heartland's harvest.
Employing magnetic resonance imaging coupled to an NCSA supercomputer, University of Illinois researchers unravel what causes corn to crack--a costly problem that can occur when corn is dried for processing, storage and export.
Ñ SuperQuest ╘91. More than just a high-school competition.
A report on the summer training sessions held at NCSA, Cornell Theory Center and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Most high school students took the summer off, but not the students you╒ll see. From all over the country, the winning teams of SuperQuest '91 came to master computational science in the only way possible--by doing it. What╒s more, they╒re beginning to produce significant science.
NCSA RealTime #4
Ñ A Window Through Time. Navigating through times past.
Travelling to South Carolina, a University of Illinois researcher traces the communities of the Old South following the Civil War. But combing through census records going back two centuries poses a formidable task, one that requires elaborate database tools now under development at NCSA.
Ñ The Flow of Fire. Probing the dynamics of turbulent combustion.
Knowledge of the physics of flowing fluids, otherwise known as computational fluid dynamics, is crucial to the design of more efficient, cleaner combustion engines. NCSA RealTime travels to MIT and the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan, whose engineers are collaborating in a study of turbulent flow. Simulations in this ╥grand challenge╙ field of research demand the power of supercomputers.
Ñ A Quantum View. Surveillance at atomic detail.
A remarkable instrument, the scanning tunneling microscope or STM, enables scientists to inspect the peaks and troughs of surfaces at the atomic level. At the University of Illinois, electrical engineers have coupled an STM to high performance computers. This feat allows them not only to visualize but also to manipulate semiconductor surfaces atom by atom.
Ñ Orbital Insights. Enhancing the chemistry classroom.
When high school chemistry teachers talk of atoms bonding, students cannot easily grasp the concept. But now they can actually see how atoms combine as simulated on a supercomputer. Brought up on TV, the students intuitively respond when interacting with the animations. By bringing high performance computing and visualization into the science classroom, NCSA hopes to enhance not only the teaching of chemistry but of science as a whole.
NCSA RealTime #4
Ñ Back to the Beginning. A journey to the start of the cosmos.
Recent galaxy maps show the universe to be distinctly "lumpy," with huge
"walls" of galaxies straddling vast distances across otherwise empty voids.
How can scientists account for this apparently uneven distribution of matter and energy? Using supercomputers and visualization, cosmologists at Princeton University and UIUC are developing advanced computer codes to simulate cosmic evolution. In doing so, they're able to "journey" back billions
of years to when the earliest large-scale cosmic structures emerged from the
Big Bang.
Ñ SuperQuest: Beyond the Contest. It's not just the winners who benefit.
In our third edition, we introduced some of the winners of this high school
science competition as they strived to master the tools and techniques of computational science during the summer of 1991. Their attendance at the Summer Institute marked only the beginning of their SuperQuest experience. What happened after they returned to their schools in Maryland, Alabama and California? How did they fare with their science projects? And apart from the winners, what did their schools gain? Watch the show to find out.
Ñ Casting Without a Crack. Simulation to the aid of Big Steel.
With recession and overseas competition intensifying, the American steel
industry has fallen on hard times. But as in other industries, technology
often holds the key to renewed global competitiveness. Nucor Steel of Crawfordsville, IN understands this. Collaborating with UIUC engineering professor Jon Dantzig, Nucor aims to prevent premature and costly cracks in a novel type of mold developed for thin slab continuous casting. The tool: high performance computing to simulate the extreme conditions in the mold.
Ñ A Cloud Upon the Forest. Probing tree damage from acid rain.
For centuries, mists have blanketed the old growth fir forests of the Pacific
Northwest, enhancing their beauty. Today, though, the mists carry industrial pollutants, particularly acid rain, which could hasten the demise of the ancient trees. In order to better quantify the link between acid rain and forest decline, scientists working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are combining field data with supercomputer models of tree physiology, specifically photosynthesis.
