Science Highlights
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Computational simulation opens a window on planet formation with a new view
Our Solar System formed about 4.5 billion years ago so it is a little late to watch Earth, Mars and their fellow planets coalescing out of the cloud of gas and dust surrounding the young sun. Nonetheless, David Minton, a Purdue planetary scientist, i...
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Madagascar’s unique animal population probably rafted there
How Madagascar got its unique collection of lemurs and other animals has puzzled naturalists for a century. Data from a Purdue professor’s three-year computer simulation appears to provide an answer: the animals floated there on natural log rafts blo...
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Purdue and Melbourne researchers propose method to image electron wavefunctions
Purdue Professor Gerhard Klimeck and a University of Melbourne, Australia, colleague have proposed a novel way to accomplish 3-D mapping of electron wavefunction—the probability that an electron will be in a given position around an atom in a solid—s...
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Patient safety focus of virtual clean room for training pharmacists
Pharmacy clean rooms and proper clean room procedures to ensure that chemotherapy and direct-to-the-bloodstream intravenous treatments remain contamination free are vital to patient safety, all the more so with the rise of super bacteria resistant to...
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Research suggests urban sprawl, wet falls and winters influence severe weather
Previously rare big city storms like a 2009 tornado that downed trees and ripped off roofs in downtown Minneapolis and a 2008 twister in Atlanta that killed one person and caused $250 million damage may not be so unusual anymore. As large urban areas...
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Purdue Professor Joseph Francisco says we may have bigger things to worry about than carbon dioxide and the other high-profile greenhouse gases that spill profusely from our car exhausts, coal-fired power plants and the like. Some lesser-known chemic...
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Researchers affiliated with ITaP’s Purdue Terrestrial Observatory program say regional surface temperatures can be affected by land use, suggesting that local and regional strategies, such as creating green spaces and buffer zones in and around urban...
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Round-the-world sound recording project for Earth Day gets help from Envision, ITaP
A project to record and create a library of sounds from around the world on Earth Day Tuesday, April 22, features a mobile application developed by ITaP’s Envision Center to help with the sound collection effort. ITaP also assisted with Web, storage...
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Access to Carter cluster yields sunny forecast for atmospheric science students
Melissa Valentino, headed toward being a weather officer for the Air Force after graduation, knows the importance of computer modeling to her field so she already had incorporated a computer science minor into her educational plan. But an ITaP and fa...
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Geospatial data project will let almost anyone put almost anything on the map
Purdue researchers and ITaP are embarking on a $4.5 million, four-year project to create a powerful Web-based system that will allow researchers worldwide to manage, curate, share, analyze and visualize geospatial data for purposes ranging from predi...
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Virtual environment makes Purdue’s real-life accessible biology wet lab available worldwide
Purdue faculty members and ITaP’s Envision Center for Data Perceptualization have developed a Web-enabled, 3-D virtual environment that recreates the real-life Accessible Biomedical Immersion Laboratory (ABIL) located at Purdue’s Discovery Learning R...
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Purdue researchers using SubmitR on DiaGrid to get results
Agricultural economics Professor Michael Delgado uses computationally demanding statistical models to study questions like the effectiveness of voluntary pollution abatement programs and the impact of education in economies of developing nations. “Al...
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PURR provides a campus hub for research data management
In January 2011, the National Science Foundation began requiring all grant proposals to include two-page plans that describe what data will be generated in the research and how the data will be managed and shared. Other funding agencies such as the N...
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Shared licensing brings powerful data visualization tool to Purdue researchers
When entomology Professor Jeffrey Holland’s class wanted to find out how changing the size and increasing the isolation of a landscape affects its ability to host 15 insect species ranging from butterflies to wasps, the researchers built a 3-D pictur...
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Virtual ICU created by faculty, ITaP partnership supports research and training
When a physician is treating a patient in an intensive care unit, nurses are more than partners. They’re also human safety checklists. Are the right medicines and equipment on hand? Has the patient consented to the procedure? Did the doctor wash his...
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ITaP, faculty partnership looks at Lake Michigan in depth -- without anybody getting wet
ITaP data visualization specialists are helping provide some illuminating 3-D animations of environmental fluid mechanics processes affecting the Great Lakes. Civil engineering Professor Cary Troy models hydrodynamic flow in Lake Michigan and collect...
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ITaP supercomputer is remote guest of honor at Iowa high-performance computing school
Moffett, ITaP’s SiCortex supercomputer, was the center of attention recently for students in the annual Iowa High Performance Computing (IHPC) Summer School. Iowa Professor Greg Howes, the course instructor, contacted the TeraGrid looking for a syste...
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Global warming could eventually make half the Earth's population centers too hot to handle
A study looking at global warming in terms of heat stress on humans, which also has application to other mammals, like pets and livestock, says half the world’s population centers could become dangerously hot within the next few centuries if the warm...
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NASA, Purdue study offers recipe for global warming-free industrial materials
Let a bunch of fluorine atoms get together in the molecules of a chemical compound and they’re like a heavy metal band at a chamber music festival. They tend to dominate the proceedings and not always for the better. That’s particularly true where th...
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Madagascar's unique animal population probably floated there to start
The origin, as well as the unique composition, of Madagascar's land animals has puzzled naturalists for more than two centuries. Now, data from a Purdue professor's three-year computer simulation on ITaP's Pete cluster appears to provide an answer:...