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The Department of Physics of the Faculty of Science and the Faculty
of Information and Communication Technology will be hosting a
talk by Professor Claudio Chiaruttini, from the Department of Mathematics
and Informatics of the University of Trieste in Italy about
“Distributed and parallel computing: which way for the user?”
that will be held on the 1st of December 2009 in Room 1 of the
Engineering Building at 14:30. Details are given below:
Distributed and parallel computing: which way for
the user?
Professor Claudio
Chiaruttini
Department of Mathematics and Informatics
University
of Trieste, Italy
Date:
1st December 2009
Time: 14:30
Venue: Room 1 of the Engineering Building
Abstract: The domain of ICT offers nowadays a wide
range of computing solutions. Multicore processors are common in many
PC’s and laptops; clusters of servers are common in research centres,
in the industry and business; Grid computing has been developed in the last
decade to tackle challenging scientific problems; the ICT business in the
past few years offered the user a series of solutions loosely known as
Cloud Computing. As a consequence, the choice for the user may not be an
easy one, since each of those architectures has characteristics that make
it effective for some kind of problems, not for all of them. Furthermore,
these solutions are often combined in hybrid systems.
The architecture of the principal parallel computer system solutions
will be presented in order to make their advantages and disadvantages
clear, with an emphasis on shared vs. distributed memory systems and Grid
computing. The challenges posed by the architecture to programming and
programming languages will also be discussed.
Biography: The present scientific interests of
Professor Chiaruttini are:
High-performance and Grid
computing: He runs a
Laboratory for the development of Grid computing software in cooperation
with the International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste. The Laboratory achieves the
formation of students in this domain and supports research groups in the
exploitation of parallel and distributed computing resources.
Automatic theorem proof
checking: He is part of
the research team of Professor Eugenio Omodeo, which works on the
development of ÆtnaNova (aka REF), a system for the certification of
theorem proofs designed and implemented by the late Professor Jack
Schwartz. In this project, Professor Chiaruttini is involved in the study
of the computability properties of universes of sets characterized by different
axiomatic systems.
He lectures in “Computer Architecture” and
“Parallel and Distributed Programming” at the Faculties of
Science and Engineering of the University of Trieste and at the Doctorate
School in Environmental and Industrial Fluid Mechanics of the same
University.
Water
- A Crisis?
Dr. Gordon Knox
Geological Consultant
Date: 2nd December 2009
Time: 14:30
Venue: Room 216 of the
Mathematics and Physics
Building
Abstract: Malta
is heading for a crisis unless attitudes to water management and
conservation change drastically. Water is common on the surface of the
earth, but only a tiny proportion is in the form of fresh liquid water and
it is not equitably distributed. Water is scarce and under severe pressure
in the Maltese islands. The natural water resources are over exploited and
insufficient for the population of the islands, such that the shortfall is
provided by expensive reverse osmosis (RO) plants and virtual water.
The lecture will describe
the Maltese water situation while making references to the global situation
and discuss possible future scenarios. More details on this topic can be
found at the url address:
http://www.dinlarthelwa.org/images/Vigilo/vigilo34.pdf
Biography:
Dr. Gordon Knox is an applied geologist who after obtaining a B.Sc at
University College London and a Ph.D at the University of Liverpool, spent
28 years in the exploration business for oil and gas with the Royal
Dutch/Shell group in various global locations. Since retiring he has been a
Visiting Lecturer at the University
of Malta and been
sponsored as an International Distinguished Lecturer by the American
Association of Petroleum Geologists. He takes an interest in issues
relating to natural resources.
Dark matter
candidates and subsequent measurements
Details
to be announced
By
Dr Kristian Zarb Adami
University of Malta
Abstract: In the era
of the Big Physics experiments the race is on to discover and measure
possible dark matter candidates. In this talk we review the latest
experiments including the Large Hadron Collider, the Square Kilometre Array
and various other projects which will come online over the next decades. We
will review the new regions of physics that will be probed with these
experiments and we end the discussion with an exposition of the theoretical
predictions.
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