Information Technology

A key objective of the ongoing EU Grid programme is to make available large-scale, distributed resources capable of solving complex processing problems. The environment, energy, health, transport and industrial design are all likely application areas. At the end of 2003 the Grid infrastructure is already a reality, interconnecting national research networks in Europe and across the world. The next question is – how do researchers access and use this huge resource?

One of largest research

From ceramics to jewellery, from Greece to Slovakia, there are hundreds of small suppliers, artists, associations, museums and commercial intermediaries that comprise Europe’s craft industry. IST-project EASYCRAFT provides the business framework and technological platform to network all these craft actors, enabling them to offer value-added services demanded by today’s craft consumers, and to meet demand for new products.

Advantages of the EASYCRAFT platform

The st

Did you just load that interesting new software on your PC? Then wondered where all your storage space has gone, while at the same time your PC seems to have ground to a halt? Think of the same predicament but magnified, not thousands but millions of times. Now you begin to see the problems confronting the world’s research community in cutting-edge research projects. And in particular, the challenges facing the DATAGRID project.

Most challenging processing applications on Earth

Convergent technology is one thing – but using your computer’s printer to make a new TV screen?

Not quite, but close. In a breakthrough for low-cost electronics manufacturing, researchers at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a Xerox subsidiary, have successfully created a transistor array of the type used to control a flat-panel display using a modified ink-jet printer and semiconductor “ink.” Still under development, the technique is expected to dramatically lower the cost of t

The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council has today announced GBP 16 million to create a massive computing Grid, equivalent to the world’s second largest supercomputer after Japan’s Earth Simulator computer. This Grid, known as GridPP2 will eventually form part of a larger European Grid, to be used to process the data deluge from CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, when its new facility, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), comes online in 2007.

GridPP is a collaboration of

Shadows are extremely important in making the graphics in 3D games and Virtual Reality applications seem natural. Soft shadows in real-time applications has largely been an unsolved problem, but now an algorithm is being introduced that will solve the problem and open many possibilities.

In his doctoral dissertation, Ulf Assarsson at the Department of Computer Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden, presents a newly developed algorithm that can create shadows of