Thursday - June 17, 2010
SLAC Today is
available online at:
http://today.slac.stanford.edu
In this issue:
New Data Silos to Expand SLAC Scientific Data Capacity
BaBar Collaboration Meeting Wraps Up
RSB Project Launches Web Site
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Thursday - June 17, 2010 |
New Data Silos to Expand SLAC Scientific Data Capacity The data silo "Johnny5" is set for retirement after
about two decades. (Photo courtesy SLAC Computing.)
SLAC has certain things in great abundance. One of them is data, particularly from scientific experiments such as BaBar. Much of SLAC's data is stored on electronic disks, but these are pricey, big on energy consumption and prone to failure. To cope with SLAC's vast arsenal of facts and figures, the computing department houses six data silos containing collectively around twenty-two thousand 200-gigabyte tapes, and around five thousand 20-gigabyte tapes. Though they are slower than disks, tapes are better for long term archival of data and more durable. Now, the six tape-based data silos are being replaced with newer, more compact storage structures. "We're going through a big change," said Randy Melen, from the computing department. As SLAC science grows in scope, particularly with the Linac Coherent Light Source, the computing department must adjust its resources. "Before the end of the year, we'll get rid of all of [the old silos]." Read more... BaBar Collaboration Meeting Wraps Up One hundred researchers attended the BaBar Collaboration meeting, which began Monday and wraps up today. (Photo by Brad Plummer.)
This week, 100 BaBarians converged on SLAC for a week of intensive review, discussion and planning. Each spring, the BaBar collaboration meets to vet recent analyses and prepare for presentations at summer conferences around the world. The largest of these summer conferences is the International Conference on High Energy Physics, which is held every two years and takes place this July in Paris. "We submitted 61 abstracts to this conference and, given the fact that the Large Hadron Collider has now turned on, I expected maybe a dozen or so to be accepted for oral presentations after combining abstracts. The number turned out to be twice that, as high as it was in 2008," said BaBar Physics Analysis Coordinator Mike Roney. "This is a very strong testament to the broader community's interest in the science being produced by BaBar." In addition to preparation for ICHEP, the collaboration meeting also included parallel sessions for detailed review of specific analyses expected to be published after ICHEP and plenary sessions covering topics including long-term data analysis and access, the upcoming Physics of B-factories book and an update on the proposed SuperB factory. "There's a tremendous amount of broad and very rich physics being presented at this meeting," Roney said.  The new RSB Web site.
RSB Project
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