Supersized Science Texas Advanced Computing Center - University of Texas at Austin

The Supersized Science podcast features research and discoveries nationwide enabled by advanced computing technology and expertise at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas at Austin. TACC science writer Jorge Salazar hosts the podcast.

Chemists have determined for the first time the crystal structure and unlocked the mechanism of activity of a family of enzymes that produce monensin, widely used as a cattle antibiotic.

The University of Texas Research Cyberinfrastructure (UTRC) initiative awarded the monensin researchers supercomputer allocations on the Lonestar6 system at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to meet the challenges of modeling the binding sites of monensin. UTRC provides advanced computing capabilities to researchers across all 14 UT System institutions.

On the podcast is Lela Vukovic, an associate professor at The University of Texas, at El Paso. She performed the computational studies on the monensin research, published October 2023 in Nature Communications.

Music Credit: Raro Bueno, Chuzausen freemusicarchive.org/music/Chuzausen/

Story link: https://tacc.utexas.edu/news/latest-news/2024/02/12/supercomputing-the-secrets-inside-cattle-antibiotics/

The Supersized Science podcast features research and discoveries nationwide enabled by advanced computing technology and expertise at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas at Austin. TACC science writer Jorge Salazar hosts the podcast.

Scientists have created the world’s first working nanoscale electromotor, according to research published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The science team designed a turbine engineered from DNA that is powered by hydrodynamic flow inside a nanopore, a nanometer-sized hole in a membrane of solid-state silicon nitride.

The tiny motor could help spark research into future applications such as building molecular factories for useful chemicals or medical probes of molecules inside the bloodstream to detect diseases such as cancer.

On the podcast today is study co-author Aleksei Aksimentiev, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Aksimentiev used TACC’s Frontera supercomputer to perform all-atom molecular dynamics simulations of the rotation of the DNA turbine.

Music Credit: Raro Bueno, Chuzausen freemusicarchive.org/music/Chuzausen/

Story link: https://tacc.utexas.edu/news/latest-news/2024/01/19/dna-origami-folded-into-tiny-motor/

The Supersized Science podcast features research and discoveries nationwide enabled by advanced computing technology and expertise at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas at Austin. TACC science writer Jorge Salazar hosts the podcast.

Optical tweezers manipulate tiny things like cells and nanoparticles using lasers. While they might sound like tractor beams from science fiction, the fact is their development garnered scientists a Nobel Prize in 2018.

Scientists have now used TACC’s Stampede2 and Lonestar5 supercomputers to make optical tweezers safer to use on living cells with applications to cancer therapy, environmental monitoring, and more.

On the podcast is Pavana Kollipara, a recent UT Austin graduate who co-authored a study on optical tweezers published August 2023 in Nature Communications, written just before he completed his PhD in mechanical engineering under fellow study co-author Yuebing Zheng of UT Austin, the corresponding author of the paper.

Music Credit: Raro Bueno, Chuzausen freemusicarchive.org/music/Chuzausen/

Story link: https://tacc.utexas.edu/news/latest-news/2023/12/20/cosmic-lights-in-the-forest/

The Supersized Science podcast features research and discoveries nationwide enabled by advanced computing technology and expertise at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas at Austin. TACC science writer Jorge Salazar hosts a special podcast for the supercomputing conference SC23 in Denver, Colorado.

The popularity of artificial intelligence has skyrocketed in 2023, thanks in large part to ChatGPT, which has created a Sputnik moment for AI, and has grabbed public attention, headlines, and funding.

What’s less known is that decades of scientific supercomputing and high performance computing (HPC) laid the foundation for AI's moment. And now science codes have good reason to adapt and follow the technological trends AI leaves in its wake.

On the podcast to discuss scientific HPC and AI is Dan Stanzione, executive director of TACC and project investigator of TACC’s largest supercomputers, Frontera, Stampede3, Lonestar6, and now Vista, TACC’s newest AI-focused system.

Supersized Science is part of the Texas Podcast Network – the conversations changing the world – brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. The opinions expressed in this podcast represent the views of the hosts, and not of The University of Texas at Austin.

Story Link: https://tacc.utexas.edu/news/latest-news/2023/11/13/scientific-supercomputing-and-ai/
Music Credit: Raro Bueno, Chuzausen freemusicarchive.org/music/Chuzausen/

The Supersized Science podcast features research and discoveries nationwide enabled by advanced computing technology and expertise at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas at Austin. TACC science writer Jorge Salazar hosts the podcast.

Optical tweezers manipulate tiny things like cells and nanoparticles using lasers. While they might sound like tractor beams from science fiction, the fact is their development garnered scientists a Nobel Prize in 2018.

Scientists have now used TACC’s Stampede2 and Lonestar5 supercomputers to make optical tweezers safer to use on living cells with applications to cancer therapy, environmental monitoring, and more.

On the podcast is Pavana Kollipara, a recent UT Austin graduate who co-authored a study on optical tweezers published August 2023 in Nature Communications, written just before he completed his PhD in mechanical engineering under fellow study co-author Yuebing Zheng of UT Austin, the corresponding author of the paper.

Music Credit: Raro Bueno, Chuzausen freemusicarchive.org/music/Chuzausen/

Story link: https://tacc.utexas.edu/news/latest-news/2023/10/31/new-twist-on-optical-tweezers/

The Supersized Science podcast features research and discoveries nationwide enabled by advanced computing technology and expertise at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas at Austin. TACC science writer Jorge Salazar hosts the podcast.

A planet about 950 light years from Earth could be the Looney Tunes’ Yosemite Sam equivalent of planets, blowing its atmospheric ‘top’ in spectacular fashion.

The planet called HAT-P-32b is losing so much of its atmospheric helium that the trailing gas tails are among the largest structures yet known of an exoplanet, a planet outside our solar system, according to observations by astronomers.

Three-dimensional simulations on the Stampede2 supercomputer of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) helped model the flow of the planet’s atmosphere, based on data from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope of The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory. The scientists hope to widen their planet-observing net and survey 20 additional star systems to find more planets losing their atmosphere and learn about their evolution.

On the podcast to talk more about his research and study on HAT-P-32b is Zhoujian Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of California Santa Cruz.

Music Credit: Raro Bueno, Chuzausen freemusicarchive.org/music/Chuzausen/

Story link: tacc.utexas.edu/news/latest-news/…er-blows-its-top/