The Exchange Programme to advance e-Infrastructures and Know-How (EPIKH) has recently started with funding from the European Commission's FP7. EPIKH consists of 23 partners of which 7 are from the EU and 2 in South Africa and will run for 4 years.

The strategic aims of the EPIKH project are to:

• Reinforce the impact of e-Infrastructures in scientific research defining and delivering stimulating programme of educational events, including Grid Schools and High Performance Computing courses;

• Broaden the engagement in e-Science activities and collaborations both geographically and across disciplines.

These ambitious goals translate into the following specific actions:

1. Spreading the knowledge about the "Grid Paradigm" to all potential users: both system administrators and application developers through an extensive training programme;

2. Easing the access of the trained people to the e-Infrastructures existing in the areas of action of the project;
3. Fostering the establishment of scientific collaborations among the countries/continents involved in the project.

IT-online perhaps cast some light on the online office. (Wednesday, 15 July 2009, 11:50)

Microsoft has announced new details of its cloud computing offerings and shared its vision for how software plus services will help enable partners to generate new revenue opportunities and provide enhanced customer value in today’s changing economic landscape.

I am running in the SA Blog Awards in one category: Best Science and Technology

The 2009 SA Blog Awards is scheduled for its annual process of nominations and voting this year from 1st March through to 1st April, and the winners announced on 3rd April.

Voting is a 2 stage process, and we are heading towards the end of stage 1.
Stage 1: Nominations: Nominations from the general public will be open from 1st March 2009 to 14th March 2009.

Stage 2: Voting: After 14th March 2009, the top 10 blogs in each category will go through to the finals.

Final voting will be open to the public from the 17th March 2009 till midnight 31st March 2009.

If you are looking to nominate someone else, Dee Chetty is your man.
[Update 15/3/09]
Nominations have been extended to 18 March!

As part of the effort of extending the capacity and relevance and of the South African National Compute Grid, we would like to call for expressions of interest to collaborate on the preparation of a proposal to the call of the EU-ACP Science and Technology Programme. This programme is funded from the 33 million euros of the European Development Fund (EDF) and covers 5 thematic areas :
* Health care
* Environmental research
* Energy
* Transport
* Agriculture and agro-industry
* Sustainable trade

I am quite interested in the nature of science. In the last 100 years science has moved from isolated geniuses to huge multinational groups of scientists. Yet there has to be (we feel intuitively) a basic hallmark of science. Here are some comments on a presentation by Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute.

First some personal observations.

Science and the "Church"

This is what Google did for google.co.za for Heritage Day:

IOL note [ 22 September 2008 at 10h35]

South Africa ranks 37th in the world in the 2008 IT industry competitiveness index, according to a study released by the Economist intelligence unit on Monday.

The country's ranking was unchanged against its 2007 ranking, a finding weighted primarily towards a strong business and legal environment, represented by 76,9 and 63,5 percent respectively.

IT-online has more details.

( 1 ) What is your HPC system being used for?
Computational Fluid Dynamics and Nuclear engineering analysis

( 2 ) How many blades, CPUs and cores are you using?
40 DL160G5 servers, (2 x Intel Xeon quad-core E5472@3GHz and 16GB ram each)
2 DL580 utility nodes, (4 x Intel Xeon quad-core X7350@2.93GHz and 64GB ram)

IT-online report Tuesday, 16 September 2008, 09:55

A group of hackers, dubbing themselves the Greek Security Team, claim to have hacked the computer system guiding the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which went into action last week and could be used to create a black hole.

IT-online report 9Monday, 15 September 2008, 09:17)

Cisco has announced a R215-million investment in the Cisco Innovation Hub Technology Centre (CIHTC), the first move in a series of programmes that are expected to drive R1-billion in GDP (gross domestic product) over five years.

The CIHTC will become the home of ICT initiatives including an InnovationLab, a global Talent Acquisition Programme, the Cisco Netversity, an Entrepreneur Institute and a Software Development Programme.

Anybody know what
* InnovationLab
* Talent Acquisition Programme
* Cisco Netversity
* Software Development Programme