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. – Today the National Academy of Sciences announced a three-year, $271,930 grant to chemist Vincent Rotello at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to develop, test and deploy new, sensitive, reliable and affordable inkjet-printed, nanoparticle-based test strips for detecting disease-causing bacteria in drinking water, with researchers at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan.
AMHERST, Mass. – Leading Bluefin tuna researchers at the universities of Massachusetts and Maine issued a rebuttal to a “factsheet” they say is an “irresponsible distortion of the information available” issued by the Pew Charitable Trusts this week, as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna’s (ICCAT) expert working groups meet in Montréal beginning today to discuss tuna stocks.
AMHERST, Mass. – Reporting this month in Molecular Microbiology, Peter Chien and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst describe using a combination of biochemistry and mass spectrometry to “trap” scores of new candidate substrates of the protease ClpXP to reveal how protein degradation is critical to cell cycle progression and bacterial development. The new understanding could lead to identifying new antibiotic targets.
AMHERST, Mass. – In the cover story for the journal Genetics this month, neurobiologist Dan Chase and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst describe a new experimental technique they developed that will allow scientists to study the function of individual proteins in individual cell types in a living organism.
AMHERST, Mass. – The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has announced that polymer scientist Maria Santore and biochemist Danny Schnell of the University of Massachusetts Amherst have been awarded the distinction of fellow in an election by their peers to recognize scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.
AMHERST, Mass. – All 45 residence halls at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are now protected with fire sprinkler systems, following a massive, voluntary retrofit to protect students in one of the nation’s largest on-campus housing systems. State Fire Marshal Stephen Coan hailed the achievement as an impressive commitment to public safety.
AMHERST, Mass. – An interdisciplinary graduate program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in offshore wind energy engineering, environmental science and policy is now up and running with 25 faculty members from nine departments working with 13 full-time graduate students. The goal of the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Offshore Wind Energy Program is to train researchers who understand the technological challenges, environmental implications, and socioeconomic and regulatory hurdles faced by offshore wind farms.
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.