AMHERST, Mass. – When Gov. Deval Patrick, UMass President Robert Caret and other state officials cut the ribbon on Friday to open the new Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) in Holyoke, a small group of scientists will be waiting in the wings, ready to step in and begin actually building a shared computer cluster, an “academic cloud” to provide service to university users.
Four principal researchers, computer science researcher Prashant Shenoy of UMass Amherst, Chris Hill of MIT, Claudio Rebbi of Boston University and Gene Cooperman of Northeastern University
AMHERST, Mass. – Scientists studying how early land vertebrates evolved from fishes long thought that the animals developed legs for moving around on land well before their feeding systems and dietary habits changed enough to let them eat a land-based diet, but strong evidence was lacking. Now, for the first time fossil jaw measurements by Philip Anderson at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and others have tested and statistically confirmed this lag.
AMHERST, Mass. – A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is proposing a new investigative roadmap for the field of evolutionary developmental biology, or “evo devo,” to better understand how innovation at the genetic level can lead to ecological adaptations over time. Evo devo seeks to understand the specific genetic mechanisms underlying evolutionary change.
AMHERST, Mass. – Geoscientist Michele Cooke and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst take an uncommon, “Earth is lazy” approach to modeling fault development in the crust that is providing new insights into how faults grow. In particular, they study irregularities along strike-slip faults, the active zones where plates slip past each other such as at the San Andreas Fault of southern California.
AMHERST, Mass. – New recommendations by a National Research Council (NRC) expert panel on green and sustainable building performance could lead to a revolution in building science by creating the first large building performance database, says panel member Paul Fisette, a nationally recognized sustainable building expert at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
AMHERST, Mass. – Evolutionary ecologist Sonya Auer of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has won the Elton Prize, one of only five British Ecological Society (BES) young investigator awards given each year to recognize the best research papers published in the society’s journals by early-career scientists.
AMHERST, Mass. – Alexander C. Schreyer, assistant director and lecturer of the building and construction technology (BCT) program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and faculty member in the architecture + design program, has released a book on SketchUp, a popular three dimensional computer-aided design (CAD) software, titled “Architectural Design with SketchUp.”
AMHERST, Mass. – Christopher Hollot, head of the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has been named interim dean of the College of Engineering by UMass Amherst Provost James V. Staros.
AMHERST, Mass. – “Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War,” a history of the Taiping rebellion by Stephen R. Platt, associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has won McGill University’s 2012 Cundill Prize, called the world’s richest and most prestigious award for historical literature.
AMHERST, Mass. – The University of Massachusetts Amherst plans to hire an outside consultant to undertake a comprehensive review of its residence hall security program, Police Chief John Horvath said today.
AMHERST, Mass. – A University of Massachusetts Amherst engineering professor has been awarded a four-year, $1.6-million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue her research on a computerized disaster-management response system. Aura Ganz, professor of electrical and computer engineering, says the system is designed to quickly organize chaotic, mass-casualty, disaster scenes, such as airliner, bus and train wrecks, and cut the evacuation time of survivors in half.
AMHERST, Mass. – Building on its success in drawing more women and under-represented minority students to study computer science at Massachusetts public colleges and universities over the past five years, the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Commonwealth Alliance for Information Technology Education (CAITE) has won a major grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and will now take a national leadership role in computer science education.
BOSTON – For almost 150 years, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has emphasized public service as critical to the social and economic development of the Commonwealth, nation and the world. On Wednesday, Nov. 14 at 6 p.m., UMass Amherst will host the first-ever A Salute to Service Awards at the Boston Harbor Hotel.