Oleg Lodygensky from the Laboratoire de l'Accélérateur Linéaire in Orsay, Paris announced the first release of XtremWeb-HEP 8.  This version allows the deployment of virtual machines over desktop grid. The release is available at
http://www.xtremweb-hep.org/spip.php?rubrique15. The documentation is available at http://www.xtremweb-hep.org/spip.php?rubrique16 and a video tutorial at http://www.xtremweb-hep.org/spip.php?article233.

Asia@home is an event co-organized by Academia Sinica Grid Computing, the Citizen Cyberscience Centre and Desktop Grids for International Scientific Collaboration (DEGISCO).

This year's Asia@home Workshop is on the topic of “Citizens and Earthquake Science”. The focus is on applications of citizen-based volunteer computing and volunteer sensing to earthquake science in South-East Asia. The purpose of the hackfest is to explore new concepts in distributed software and hardware, and brainstorm about how to increase web-based public participation in earthquake science.

The two-day workshop tackles two specific challenges:
The first day focuses on how to deploy the volunteer-based earthquake sensing project Quake Catcher Network in Taiwan and neighbouring regions of South-East Asia, such as Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. QCN provides seismic researchers with new and unique sources of information about seismic events. It is also contributing to public awareness about earthquake science.

The second day focuses on integrating large-scale simulation packages for earthquake science with the volunteer computing platform BOINC, so that home PCs and laptops, as well as desktop grids in research institutes, may contribute to simulation-based research. Topics include volunteer cloud computing, bridging volunteer and grid resources, and services provided by the International Desktop Grdi Federation (IDGF).

Guest speakers include Prof. Jesse Lawrence, Stanford School of Earth Sciences, Stanford University.

Asia@home welcomes seismic scientists, grid and volunteer computing enthusiasts, and science education experts.

More information is available at http://event.twgrid.org/isgc2012/asiaathome.html

The International Symposium on Grids and Clouds (ISGC) 2012 will be held at Academia Sinica in Taipei, from 26 February to 2 March 2012, with co-located events and workshops. The conference is hosted by the Academia Sinica Grid Computing Centre (ASGC), Taipei, Taiwan. To enjoy the early bird discount rate, you can register before 13 January, 2012.

"Convergence, Collaboration, Innovation" is the theme of ISGC 2012. The last decade has seen the wide-scale emergence of e-Infrastructure as a critical asset for the modern e-Scientist. The emergence of large-scale research infrastructures and instruments that has produced a torrent of electronic data is forcing a generational change in the scientific process and the mechanisms used to analyse the resulting data deluge.

No longer can the processing of these vast amounts of data and production of relevant scientific results be undertaken by a single scientist. Virtual Research Communities that span organisations around the world, through an integrated digital infrastructure that connects the trust and administrative domains of multiple resource providers, have become critical in supporting these analyses.

ISGC 2012 will be the 10th meeting, that over the last decade has tracked the convergence, collaboration and innovation of individual researchers across the Asia Pacific region to a coherent community and as a result has helped drive the growth of regional e-Science activities and its collaborations around the world.

For more symposium information and detailed topic description, you can visit the conference website at http://event.twgrid.org/isgc2012/index.html

Topics of Interest include:

Applications and results from the Virtual Research Communities and Industry:
1. High Energy Physics
2. Biomedicine and Life Sciences
3. Earth Science, Environmental Changes and Natural Disaster Mitigation
4. Humanities and Social Sciences

Activity to enable the provisioning of a Resource Infrastructure:
5. Operation and Management
6. Middleware and Interoperability
7. Security and Networking
8. Infrastructure clouds and Virtualisation
9. Business Models and Sustainability

Technologies that provide access and exploitation of different site resources and infrastructures:
10. Data Management
11. Distributed Volunteer and Desktop Grid Computing
12. High Throughput Computing
13. High Performance, Manycore and GPU Computing

The International Desktop Grid Federation is getting quite some exposure at SC11 in Seattle, Washington, November 12-18, 2011 at booth #2639 of the Hungarian Grid Competence Centre.  You can find the IDGF poster there.  For more explanation, IDGF-representative Robert Lovas is present at SC11 for MTA SZTAKI. MTA SZTAKI provides high level grid gateways, application porting support and turn-key solutions for grid users. As the project coordinator of several EU projects, its research and support activities focus on Desktop Grids, Clouds, and work flow interoperability.

The Ukraine IDGF member IMP, lead by Yuri Gordienko from the DEGISCO project did win the first price  for best poster at the Cracow Grid Workshop.

 The full title is: "From Quantity to Quality: Massive Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Nanostructures under Plastic Deformation in Desktop and Service Grid Distributed Computing Infrastructure: O. Baskova, O. Gatsenko, L. Bekenev, E. Pavlov, and Y. Gordienko."

Congratulations to the Ukraine team!

The Ukraine IDGF member IMP, lead by Yuri Gordienko from the DEGISCO project did win the first price  for best poster at the Cracow Grid Workshop.

 The full title is: "From Quantity to Quality: Massive Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Nanostructures under Plastic Deformation in Desktop and Service Grid Distributed Computing Infrastructure: O. Baskova, O. Gatsenko, L. Bekenev, E. Pavlov, and Y. Gordienko."

Congratulations to the Ukraine team!