iSGTW is now Science Node Learn more about our evolution

  • Subscribe
Science Node

iSGTW Feature - Sicily's TriGrid tames "unbeatable" monster

Feature - The Sicilian grid tames “unbeatable” monster Born from the god Thyphoon and the dragon Echidna, the Chimera was a terrible and unbeatable monster with a lion's head, goat's body and snake's tail. The CHIMERA particle multidetector takes its name from this monster.Images courtesy of the CHIMERA Collaboration Not a fire-breathing monster, although just as extraordinary, CHIMERA—or Charged Heavy Ion Mass and Energy Resolving Array—is one of the few tools that allow study of the fascinating process of nuclear fragmentation, where high-speed particles crumble into various pieces of exotic nuclear matterA particle multidetector installed at the INFN's Laboratori Nazionali del Sud in Catania, Italy, CHIMERA measures and observes this process, producing conspicuous amounts of valuable data that are used by researchers to further technical innovations, understand the nature and behavior of matter, and much more.The evolution of global scienceAs a worldwide collaboration, CHIME


Feature - The Sicilian grid tames "unbeatable" monster
Born from the god Thyphoon and the dragon Echidna, the Chimera was a terrible and unbeatable monster with a lion's head, goat's body and snake's tail. The CHIMERA particle multidetector takes its name from this monster.
Images courtesy of the CHIMERA Collaboration

Not a fire-breathing monster, although just as extraordinary, CHIMERA-or Charged Heavy Ion Mass and Energy Resolving Array-is one of the few tools that allow study of the fascinating process of nuclear fragmentation, where high-speed particles crumble into various pieces of exotic nuclear matter

A particle multidetector installed at the INFN's Laboratori Nazionali del Sud in Catania, Italy, CHIMERA measures and observes this process, producing conspicuous amounts of valuable data that are used by researchers to further technical innovations, understand the nature and behavior of matter, and much more.

The evolution of global science

As a worldwide collaboration, CHIMERA and the data it produces must be made available to researchers across the globe. Further, the physical variables coming into play in CHIMERA experiments are numerous and complex, require extensive analyses and produce considerable amounts of data that must be stored in a unique and easily accessible database.

Our solution is grid computing.
This silent clip gives a good idea of the 3D structure of the CHIMERA detector. Data from the CHIMERA are made available to scientists in remote locations thanks to the Sicilian e-infrastructure.
Image courtesy of the CHIMERA Collaboration


Sicily's growing grid

Porting CHIMERA to the grid became an important goal for both the TriGrid Virtual Laboratory and PI2S2, two projects that aim to provide Sicilian researchers with a virtual grid-powered region-wide laboratory for scientific and industrial applications. The projects' missions are to establish a distributed, on-demand and cutting edge e-infrastructure that is "open," general purpose and connected to other national and international grids.

CHIMERA applications have been successfully grid-enabled using GENIUS, the user-friendly grid portal jointly developed by INFN and NICE srl. Now, users belonging to the CHIMERA world-wide collaboration can simply login from their Internet browsers and perform the analysis of experimental data.

This work was carried out in the context of the TriGrid Virtual Laboratory and PI2S2 projects. TriGrid is financed by the Sicilian Regional Government under its "Programma Operativo Regionale 2000-2006" and PI2S2 is financed by the Italian Ministry of University and Research, under its "Programma Operativo Nazionale 2000-2006". The Sicilian Grid infrastructure of TriGrid VL and PI2S2 is distributed over eleven sites and counts, altogether, more than 2500 CPU cores and 350 TB of disk storage.

CHIMERA, designed and built by searchers belonging to INFN-LNS and Section of INFN Catania and Physics department of Catania, was financed by the INFN. EGEE's gLite middleware is used as an underlying support for the projects.

- Gaetano Lanzalone, INFN-LNS

Posted on Apr 30 2008 1:00am

Share this story

Republish

Tags

Join the conversation

Do you have story ideas or something to contribute?
Let us know!

Funding partners

NSF

This is a free online publication. The National Science Foundation supports the US desk under award 1242759, for sustaining and strengthening International Science Grid This Week (which recently became the Science Node).

CERN

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, supports the Science Node. The organization has played a key role in the publication since 2006, and currently hosts the European editor.

Categories

Connect with us

Contact

Science Node

Copyright © 2015 Science Node ™  |  Privacy Notice  |  Sitemap

Disclaimer: While Science Node ™ does its best to provide complete and up-to-date information, it does not warrant that the information is error-free and disclaims all liability with respect to results from the use of the information.

Republish

We encourage you to republish this article online and in print, it’s free under our creative commons attribution license, but please follow some simple guidelines:
  1. You have to credit our authors.
  2. You have to credit ScienceNode.org — where possible include our logo with a link back to the original article.
  3. You can simply run the first few lines of the article and then add: “Read the full article on ScienceNode.org” containing a link back to the original article.
  4. The easiest way to get the article on your site is to embed the code below.

The full article is available here as HTML.

Press Ctrl-C to copy