World’s most powerful supercomputer becomes operational

October 5th, 2009 Saudi king dismisses cleric after criticismRIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The Saudi king dismissed a prominent hard-line cleric who criticized a university he recently launched for allowing men and women to take classes together. King Abdullah issued a royal decree relieving Sheik Saad bin Naser al-Shethri from his duties on the powerful government-sanctioned Council of Senior Islamic Scholars, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

September 30th, 2009 Saudi king's university slammed for coed classesRIYADH, Saudi Arabia — A prominent Muslim cleric has criticized a new Saudi university launched by King Abdullah for allowing men and women to take classes together. Sheik Saad Bin Naser al-Shethri, who is a member of the powerful government-sanctioned Supreme Committee of (Islamic) Scholars, was quoted Wednesday in the Al-Watan daily as demanding an end to coed classes at the newly opened King Abdullah Science and Technology University.

September 26th, 2009 TEHRAN - Iran's new nuclear fuel enrichment plant will be operational soon, head of the office of Iran's supreme leader Mohammad Mohammadi-Golpayegani said Saturday, according to a media report. "This new plant, god willing, will be operational soon," Mohammadi-Golpayegani was quoted as saying.

September 26th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists have warned that increasingly powerful "supertyphoons" will strike Japan if global warming continues to affect weather patterns in the western Pacific Ocean. According to a report in National Geographic News, supercomputer simulations show there will be more typhoons with winds of 179 miles (288 kilometers) per hour-considered an F3 on the five-level Fujita Scale-by 2074.

September 16th, 2009 Worlds oceans warmest on record this summerWASHINGTON — The world's in hot water. Sea-surface temperatures worldwide have been the hottest on record over the last three months, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday.

August 22nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A scientist of Indian origin has created a new supercomputer, called Cystorm, which can carry out 28.16 trillion calculations per second. Cystorm, a Sun Microsystems machine, was developed by Srinivas Aluru from the Iowa State University.

August 11th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new supercomputer simulation designed to track the fate of the universe's first black holes has found that the mysterious cosmic objects couldn't efficiently gorge themselves on nearby gas, and thus had to keep themselves on a strict diet, starving in the process. "The first stars were much more massive than most stars we see today, upwards of 100 times the mass of our sun," said John Wise, a post-doctoral fellow at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and one of the study's authors.

July 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Reports indicate that the newest supercomputer, which can perform more than 160 trillion calculations per second, is ready to take on problems in areas such as climate science, hydrogen storage and molecular chemistry. The 21.4 million dollar Chinook supercomputer, built by HP, is almost 15 times faster than its predecessor, and has now been commissioned for use by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the (US) Department of Energy.

July 25th, 2009 LONDON - The British government will send reinforcements to Afghanistan to help maintain the required operational effectiveness in the wake of rising number of casualties suffered by its troops while fighting the Taliban in that country, officials said Friday. Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth said 125 additional soldiers will be deployed in Afghanistan to strengthen the security ahead of the presidential elections in August.

July 24th, 2009 WASHINGTON - What is being expected to prove the most powerful computer of its kind in the world became operational at the University of Florida this week. The supercomputer has been named by its designers 'Novo-G'.

May 31st, 2009 World's strongest laser unveiled at California labLIVERMORE, Calif. — The world's most powerful laser, created to help keep tabs on the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile while also studying the heavens, has been unveiled.

May 29th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The world's largest solar telescope, which can capture the Sun's magnetic field better than other telescopes, is now operational. The new 1.6-meter clear aperture solar telescope, the largest of its kind in the world, is housed at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey, US.

May 15th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute is going to launch a project called 'Earth Speaks', which will collect messages online from people around the world, asking them about their questions to an alien civilization. "Earth Speaks invites people to ponder the question, 'What would you say to an extraterrestrial civilization?'," said Thomas Pierson, Chief Executive Officer of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

May 5th, 2009 WASHINGTON - What if scientists create self-cleaning walls and fabrics or even micro-scale robots that can walk on water? Well, researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Japan's RIKEN institute claim to have moved a step closer to realising such materials. The researchers have revealed that their work is based on a study of a property called super hydrophobia, which is behind how water beads up and rolls off flowers, caterpillars and some insects, and how insects like water striders are able to walk effortlessly on water.

May 1st, 2009 WASHINGTON - The US State Department has said that al Qaeda's No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri has emerged as the terrorist outfits operational leader, having a similar 25 million dollars prize money on his head as Osama bin Laden. Despite years of the Bush administration claims that Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor turned Osama bin Laden deputy, was on the lam with his boss and unable to exert control, this was not true according to the State Department report.