CHAMPAIGN, Ill. ? The University of Illinois says Seattle-based Cray Inc. will take over construction of the stalled $300 million Blue Waters supercomputer project, three months after IBM pulled out citing cost and technical concerns.
Cray expects to have the computer online next year, keeping the project, which is being primarily paid for by the National Science Foundation, on track to finish on time.
"We clearly had to do it real quickly," said Thom Dunning, the director of the school's National Center for Supercomputing Applications. "NSF's goal was to keep the project on track as much as it possibly could be."
The cost and financing will stay essentially the same, Cray CEO Peter Ungaro said. The NSF will provide just over $200 million with the remaining $100 million coming from the university and the state of Illinois. Cray will be paid $188 million, the equivalent of about half of its total revenue from its most recent fiscal year.
"This is a transformational contract for the company," Ungaro said. "It's a very big deal for us. It's a huge contract based on the size of the company and we couldn't be more excited about it."
The design and scope of what Blue Waters should be able to do in the years ahead will change, he said.
Once completed, the supercomputer will be used for a range of projects, including the study of how tornadoes are formed and how viruses invade cells.
Blue Waters was announced in 2007 as a project to build what would have been at least briefly the world's fastest computer and a computer that could operate at sustained speeds of a petaflop ? a thousand trillion operations a second and a long-sought standard that makes massive computational projects possible.
There are now a number of computers capable of faster peak speeds, the fastest being the K Computer in Japan.
Blue Waters will still aim to be able to run at petaflop speeds for long periods, but it will also now incorporate graphics processing units, or GPUs, which will increase its power, Dunning and Ungaro said. GPUs have tremendous power to allow them to handle high-demand graphics applications, but they've only seriously been applied to general-purpose computing since the Blue Waters project was conceived, Dunning said.
The incorporation of this relatively new use for graphics technology could also extend the computer's life, Ungaro said.
"I think we're building a system that almost future-proofs it in many ways," he said.
Blue Waters' will have what Ungaro called "a tremendous amount of memory," 1.5 petabytes, a quadrillion bytes. Large amounts of memory were something Dunning said researchers told the university they'd like to see in the project as the university looked for a new builder.
Cray competed to be the builder of Blue Waters when the NSF chose the University of Illinois and IBM in 2007, and Ungaro said he'd thought a lot about the project since then, "but it hasn't been anything that's been in our plans or even our dreams over the last couple of years."
But as far back as April, officials at the Supercomputing Center said, it was apparent that there were problems that could derail the project.
When IBM backed out in August, it cited technical and cost concerns about the project, but didn't provide details. A $72 million building built just for the project, the National Petascale Computing Facility, was built on the university campus.
At the time, the NSF said there were no guarantees that the project would continue.
Now, Dunning said, 25 groups from around the world, including several from the university, have tentatively been given time on Blue Waters, with perhaps a dozen ready to go when the computer goes online.
"We'll be holding (the projects) back trying to figure out how we schedule them on the machine," Dunning said.
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Follow David Mercer on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DavidMercerAP
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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Support for the Taliban among Afghans has steadily declined in recent years and people strongly back a government peace initiative, according to a survey funded in part by the U.S. government.
But the survey released Tuesday by the nonprofit San Francisco-based Asia Foundation also showed a population weary of insecurity and corruption, and distressed by poverty and corruption.
The survey found that an overwhelming majority of Afghan adults, 82 percent, back reconciliation and reintegration efforts with insurgent groups. It said that the number of people who said they sympathized with the aims of Taliban had dropped to 29 percent compared to 40 percent last year and 56 percent in 2009.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been making peace overtures to the Taliban for years with the backing of the international community. These efforts however were dealt a major blow by the Sept. 20 assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was leading the government's U.S.-backed initiative.
The survey was conducted prior to Rabbani's death.
Beyond that, while the survey showed some confidence in Afghanistan's economic development, it also showed dissatisfaction with the state's ability to deliver both security and clean government.
"The biggest problem at the national level is insecurity, followed by unemployment and corruption" said Bruce Tolentino, the foundation's country representative.
A lack of security was identified as the biggest problem in the country by 38 percent of those polled, especially in the south and east where insurgents are fighting Afghan security forces and U.S.-led coalition troops. Of those asked, 71 percent said they feared traveling from one part of Afghanistan to another.
Although roughly half of those polled thought the Afghan police and army were "unprofessional and poorly trained," a growing number of people thought they were steadily improving. There was also a small reduction in the number of people who feel the two security forces can operate without foreign help, although a majority think they can't.
The U.S.-led coalition has spent tens of billions of dollars to try and train more than 300,000 Afghan army and police forces so they can gradually take charge of security as the foreign forces end their combat mission at the end of 2014 and go home or move into support roles.
But a series of spectacular attacks by the Taliban this year ? many occurring after the survey was conducted ? has raised doubts about the ability of Afghan security forces. They include a September attack against the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters that led to a 20-hour standoff in downtown Kabul.
The survey found some indications of optimism, particularly in terms of the country's development.
Nearly half of those asked, or 46 percent, thought the country was moving in the right direction. Reconstruction and rebuilding, good security in some areas and improvements in the education system were the main reasons. But for the first time since the survey began in 2004, a rising number now think that Afghanistan is moving in the wrong direction ? an increase to 35 percent from 27 last year.
This confidence, such as it is, appeared however to be linked to development and economic growth that analysts warn may be fragile, and tied to the country's war economy.
The survey found that of those who thought the country was moving in the right direction, 40 percent said reconstruction was the primary reason.
U.S. and international aid to Afghanistan is expected to decline by the end of 2014, and an Afghan economy largely driven by international aid and international military spending is then widely expected to go into recession.
U.S. State Department and USAID assistance will be cut from $4.1 billion in 2010 to $2.5 billion in 2011. The World Bank found that 97 percent of the gross domestic product in Afghanistan is linked to spending by the international military and donors.
In issues related to governance, although the survey said a majority of Afghans were satisfied with the performance of the government, it did not address the issue of whether they were satisfied with the country's leadership or its president. Karzai has been criticized by the Afghan opposition and by the international community for not doing enough to combat corruption, and for ignoring institutions such as the parliament.
In 2011, for the first time, the majority of respondents said corruption was a major problem in all facets of daily life.
Sixty-four percent said corruption was a major problem in their provincial government and 76 percent said they thought corruption was a major problem for Afghanistan as a whole.
"The majority of respondents say that the government is doing a bad job in fighting corruption," the survey report said.
The survey also found that although Afghans expressed increased satisfaction with the government's performance in delivering services, they were not impressed by the country's nascent democratic institutions in general. "Since 2008, there has been a steady rise in those who say they are dissatisfied with the way democracy works in the country," the survey said.
The survey was conducted among 6,348 adults in July in all of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, excluding some dangerous areas. The survey, conducted with financial backing from the U.S. Agency for International Development, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
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Tuesday night.
And then my faith in the American people, especially in the Mississippi people, was redeemed.
My friend Jodi Jacobson, editor of RH Reality Check, pointed-out Wednesday morning that while the "egg-as-person" amendment, Initiative 26, was roundly defeated by Mississippi voters yesterday, Initiative 27, the "voter ID" amendment, passed.
Initiative 27 is also insidious: According to Jodi, it "...will disenfranchise minority voters who already suffer discrimination in a state with a history of denying African Americans their right to vote."
I recently gave a speech in which I told a story of asking my mother why she wasn't going to Mississippi to register voters. This was in 1964, at a time when my mother -- and father -- were dragging my sister and me around as they relentlessly canvassed, leafleted, drove people to the polls, and otherwise made sure that local (Democratic) voters exercised the franchise. Suffice to say, this daughter of an immigrant mother doesn't take lightly this matter of the right to vote.
Yet, while my mother has never made it to Mississippi, I have -- willingly and many times.
In fact, I love Mississippi. I go every chance I get.
Am I crazy? Nope, not in this respect, anyway.
I love, love, love Mississippi. For its music. I first heard the (Mississippi) blues as a teenager, growing up in New York. That song was Jimmy Reed's "Big Boss Man," played every day to open Jack Spector's WMCA radio show. Later, my love affair with Mississippi was sealed when, as a college student, I heard Albert King's "Born under a Bad Sign" and Robert Johnson's "Sweet Home Chicago" (ironically, a story of leaving "bad" Mississippi for "good" Chicago; keep reading).
This Mississippi love affair is also why I live in Chicago.
Where else (but Mississippi) could one hear Jimmy Reed live and that Robert-Johnson-type music live every night? And, so, sweet home Chicago it was: The minute we could, my husband and I packed our bags and moved to Chicago: no jobs, no money, no home, no matter; we were satisfied with the knowledge we would get to hear Jimmy Reed and Robert Johnson's "grandson," Muddy Waters, (who, unlike Johnson, had taken "Sweet Home Chicago" to heart), and so many (Mississippi bluesmen) others, just about every night of the week.
Mississippi (by way of its northernmost city, Chicago) was going to be heaven, for sure.
So, when this egg-as-person-in-Mississippi amendment reared its ugly head, so-to-speak, I looked up. I paid attention. This was my Mississippi these crazies were talking about.
And then I came to my senses: In her right mind, how could any Mississippian -- black or white -- think egg-as-person was a good idea? Well, as it turns out, she couldn't.
Notwithstanding Mississippi's reputation as an oh-so-backward state, Mississippians -- just like the rest of us -- think carefully as they head to the polls.
They thought about the full import of Initiative 26. They read about it. Then, they read some more. They grappled with the idea that egg-as-person just doesn't work, even if you've looked at one of those jars with a dead fetus in it and been repelled.
Indeed, the more they grappled with it, the worse egg-as-person appeared.
Yes, I appreciate Planned Parenthood, the Episcopal Church, and the thousands of Mississippi parents who organized against Initiative 26 and defeated it. But, I also credit the unorganized, black and white, who thoughtfully exercised their right to vote and knowingly voted against Initiative 26.
I also appreciate the implication of Jodi's point about the differing fate of the two initiatives (I haven't seen the county-by-county voter data that might confirm this), i.e., Mississippi whites likely split their initiative votes, while Mississippi blacks likely voted against both measures, a presumptive indicator of the dim state of Mississippi race relations.
But, in response, I say: "Same old, same old," just as they say in Mississippi. Same race relations' status quo as in so many other American homeplaces last night.
Yes, just like in so many other American home-places, black and white Mississippians see things differently, and, consequently, vote differently. It's not a wonderful thing, but it's not the same thing as egg-as-person. In fact, as Mississippians proved Tuesday night, when things in American home-places get really, really bad, together, we get our act together; together, we overcome, and we reject such horrible foolishness.
Tuesday night, while Mississippians were voting, I went to a dinner in Chicago for supporters of human rights, featuring a speech by Farai Maguwu, a black Zimbabwean man, who spoke about the racist atrocities of Robert Mugabe. (Racism knows no color, in case you were wondering.)
But this audience sure did (know racial color, that is): Sold out, there was a mere handful of African Americans in a room of close to 1,000 people, in a city whose population is close to 40 percent African American -- most of whom descendants of Mississippians who left Mississippi for "Sweet Home Chicago," but haven't found Chicago so sweet these days.
In fact, in 2011 there are tens of thousands of fewer children of Mississippi in Chicago than there were just a decade ago.
Notwithstanding the likelihood of now having to deal with a voter id law that will likely discriminate against them (and wouldn't have passed in Chicago), many of the departed have willingly returned to Mississippi. It's cheaper to live there, and, well, while the schools aren't that great, they stack up against the schools most of these Mississippi children attended in Chicago's neighborhoods, where racism knows color, big time.
Which brings me back to where I started this piece: In 1964, when I was in school and asked my mother about her plans for the summer, I was attending school with one, seemingly, African-American boy. However, he was, some said, "really Puerto Rican." Yes, racist neighbors really said that because this (alternative racial) heritage made his being around us, in their eyes, excusable.
By contrast, it was the next town over (both towns barely 20 miles from Harlem), where I went to the YMCA, which had the local black ghetto.
I took the bus there and crossed our local color line three or four times a week. I thought about this crossing every time I made it, as well as when I wasn't on the bus. So-much-so that my writing opinion pieces about racial matters started then: I was having my own experiences with the issue of race and needed to think-them-through.
Today, 47 years since my conversation with my mother about Mississippi voting; 47 years since the Civil Rights Act was passed and since a lot has changed for the better in Mississippi (say, blacks vote, and blacks and whites vote the same way, sometimes), many northern white Americans still abhor Mississippi. They think it's racist in a way that the rest of America isn't. I know they do. They tell me.
Then, I ask them to reconsider (baby). Then, they look at me with disdain.
Then, I remind them that Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney wouldn't have had a song to record, much less the proverbial "pot ......." had they not listened to Mississippi sons Muddy Waters, Albert King and Junior Wells, whose great grandsons voted Tuesday against eggs-as-persons, just like the great grandsons of the white sharecroppers down the road did.
When Nina Simone sang "Mississippi Goddam," she sang: "All I want is equality for my sister, my brother and me." Well, in some ways, if not all ways, she's got it. We just have to remember that we shall overcome, if we keep fighting, together, to get the rest of that equality Simone sung about.
?
Follow Rebecca Sive on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RebeccaSive
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-sive/mississippi-personhood_b_1084461.html
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The unusual confluence of numbers in today's date has many Southern Californians dumbfounded, fearful, exultant and wondering what it all means.
Squared, the date becomes a palindrome (reads the same backward and forward): 111111 X 111111 = 12345654321.
In the ancient Maya calendar it was supposed to usher in a planetary rebirth, according to modern apocalyptica that has inspired any number of YouTube videos and TV segments.
But is it a good day or a bad day? Nobody knows, but here in Los Angeles, plenty of people are determined not to miss out on the cosmic vibes.
Promoter Kendall Ray Morgan of Tucson said he is expecting 600 people for his three--day 11-11-11 Crystal Skulls World Mysteries Gateway in L.A. Event at an airport hotel.
The Crystal Skulls gathering brings Maya shamans from the Yucatan bearing, yes, 13 crystal skulls which, according to a prophesy, will tell humankind how it can save itself, presumably before the world ends.
Morgan says there will be ancient ceremonies, lectures, a crystal skull drawing and private sessions with the skulls themselves.
"Who knows?" he said, when asked where the skulls came from. "There have been healings, people have remembered things they forgot long ago. People are extremely worked up about this; we will probably have to turn away 200 people tomorrow."
Hari Jiwan, a teacher at Golden Bridge yoga studio in Hollywood, calls it a day of shifting cosmic direction that could go either way.
The shift brought the asteroid 2005 YU55 hurtling close to Earth and dumped the most autumn snow on New York City since the Civil War, he said.
During the last period of similar intergalactic tumult, Atlantis fell into the sea and Noah had his flood, Jiwan said.
Golden Bridge is promising to usher students through "the magic entry gates" of 11:11 a.m. and 1:11 p.m at a sold-out meditation class promising access to "galactic manifestation realms."
For those stuck in the office or picking up the kids during the session, Jiwan advises getting on the right side of the vibrations.
"Tomorrow, no matter where you are, look for the most positive, beneficial solution and take it," he said. "Be aware of your breath, of your kindness and the gentleness of your own nature."
Gabrielle Bernstein, a life coach and meditation guide and the author of the book "Spirit Junkie," said she has 1,000 people signed up for her lecture, streaming live from New York City, on using 11-11-11 to draw "synchronicity" ? the force you use when you think of a long-lost friend and he suddenly calls you.
"It's an auspicious day, a time to raise our thoughts to being of service to the planet, " said Bernstein, who will be selling online tickets right up to the start of the event.
To mathematicians, 11-11-11 is a prime number ? nice, even useful, but still just a number.
"11-11-11, it doesn't mean much," UCLA mathematician Haruzo Hida said. "I'm a numbers theorist, but we don't study meanings."
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VATICAN CITY ? The Vatican said Thursday that Pope Benedict XVI is looking into visiting Cuba and Mexico next spring, traveling to a region where about half of the world's Catholics live and where Pope John Paul II made historic visits during his pontificate.
The announcement marked the first word from the Vatican of a possible foreign trip for the pontiff next year, and signals that despite his age ? he turns 85 in April ? and increasing frailty, Benedict still intends to travel far to meet the world's Catholics.
Mexico is poised to take Brazil's place as the world's top Catholic nation, although the church is losing members in both countries. The church in Cuba, meanwhile, has taken on a prominent role recently in negotiating the release of jailed dissidents.
In recent days, the Vatican asked its papal envoys in Cuba and Mexico to inform religious and political authorities that Benedict is studying a "concrete project" to visit the two countries, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said.
A final decision with details is expected soon.
Benedict has limited his travels mostly to Europe, both to spare him from long trips and to focus his efforts on a continent where Christianity has fallen by the wayside. He did visit Brazil in 2007 and has said he hopes to return in 2013 for World Youth Day, the church's youth festival. And he has a trip to Benin coming up later this month, his second to Africa in his six-year-pontificate.
Lombardi said Latin America's Spanish-speaking countries have long wanted a visit of their own, particularly Mexican Catholics, who received four visits from John Paul ? including the very first foreign visit by the new pontiff in 1979 that marked the first ever trip by a pope to Mexico.
John Paul also visited Cuba in a historic 1998 tour.
Though Cuba under Fidel Castro never severed ties with the Vatican, relations between the communist government and the church were strained for decades. Tensions eased in the early 1990s, however, when the government removed references to atheism in the constitution and allowed believers of all faiths to join the Communist Party.
John Paul's 1998 visit further improved relations, and top Vatican cardinals have made frequent visits to the island since then: The Vatican's No. 2 visited in 2008 and the foreign minister just last year.
The Catholic Church has played an increasingly visible role on the island since then, most significantly in negotiating the freedom of 75 intellectuals and social commentators who were jailed during a 2003 crackdown on dissent.
The last of the detainees was released earlier this year under a deal brokered by Cardinal Jaime Ortega, with many of the dissidents sent into exile in Spain.
Lombardi said a visit by Benedict to Cuba would offer "great encouragement" to the island's faithful "as the church and its people live through an important time in their history." Next year Cuban Catholics will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the image of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, Cuba's patron saint.
Lombardi acknowledged, however, that the trip will not be easy on the pope. Benedict has appeared weaker in recent public appearances and recently began using a moving platform to spare him from having to walk down the long aisle of St. Peter's Basilica during Masses, leading to speculation that he might trim back his travel schedule further.
No other foreign trips have been announced by the Vatican for 2012.
Lombardi noted the long flight from Rome to Latin America in explaining that there would be just a few stops, not many, but that they would be "of great symbolic and pastoral value." Mexico City itself would likely be left off the itinerary because of its high altitude, he said, adding that an alternative is being studied.
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NAIROBI, Kenya ? Military aircraft from Sudan crossed the new international border with South Sudan and dropped bombs Thursday in and around a camp filled with refugees fleeing violence in the north, officials said. At least 12 people were killed.
The violence in and near the Yida refugee camp, located 10 miles (15 kilometers) south of the border, came one day after bombings were reported in another region of South Sudan, an attack that provoked strong condemnation from the U.S. State Department.
The president of South Sudan, which became the world's newest country only four months ago, said he fears the Khartoum-based government intends to invade the south soon.
"Whatever allegations Khartoum labels against the Republic of South Sudan are baseless, but intended to justify his pending invasion of the south," President Salva Kiir said. He later added: "We are committed to peaceful resolutions to any conflict but we will never allow our sovereignty to be violated by anybody."
The violence is especially troubling given the history between the two sides: The black African tribes of South Sudan and the mainly Arab north battled two civil wars over more than five decades, and some 2 million died in the latest war, from 1983-2005.
A peace deal ended the war and South Sudan became its own country in July after a successful independence referendum. But there have been lingering disputes over border demarcation and oil-sharing revenues.
Miabek Lang, the commissioner of Pariang County in South Sudan's Unity State, said 12 people were killed and 20 were wounded in Thursday's bombing, and that the death toll could rise.
Jonathan Hutson, a spokesman for the U.S. advocacy group the Enough Project, said aid workers inside the Yida refugee camp said at least one bomb landed in the camp, and three or four fell outside it. The aid workers or their groups could not be named for security reasons, Hutson said.
Hutson said at least 15,000 refugees who fled violence in Sudan are living in the Yida camp. They walked at least seven days to reach the camp, he said.
The Wednesday bombings in Upper Nile state sparked condemnation from the U.S. State Department, which said the "unacceptable and unjustified" attacks increase the potential of conflict between Sudan and South Sudan. South Sudan's president said Thursday that seven people were killed in those bombings.
John Prendergast, the co-founder of the Enough Project, said the regime in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, is attempting to provoke South Sudan into restarting a war.
"The regime's end game is to either capture South Sudan's oil fields along their common border, or achieve a stronger negotiating position on shared oil revenues and border demarcation," Prendergast said. "This provocation must be countered by the full force of the international community, or else a massive war could unfold."
South Sudan's oil reserves must be pumped through pipelines that run through Sudan. Splitting the oil revenues has long been a major sticking point between the two sides. Another major issue is the demarcation of the border. Though the countries are now separate an official border has not yet been laid down.
Sudan has accused South Sudan of arming pro-South Sudan groups in its territory. But Kiir said Thursday that the accusations from Khartoum are "smoke screens" to mask Sudan's support of armed groups fighting a proxy war against South Sudan.
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WASHINGTON ? A federal judge is stopping H&R Block's plans to acquire the creator of TaxACT software because she found it would reduce competition in the do-it-yourself tax preparation market.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell agreed with the Obama administration that the deal violates antitrust laws and would leave just two major providers of tax software.
She said in an opinion Thursday that if the deal went through, Kansas City, Mo.-based H&R Block and Intuit, the Mountain View, Calif.-based maker of the popular "TurboTax" software program, would control over 90 percent of the market.
Howell wrote that products to help taxpayers are important since "the task of preparing a tax return brings joy to the hearts of few."
TaxACT was created by 2nd Story Software, based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
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