Fairbanks, Alaska, October 2, 2012-- “As Alaska’s Research University UAF (University of Alaska Fairbanks) must continue to provide the best tools, ARSC is one of the most important tools available,” said Brian Rogers, Chancellor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. And the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center’s new tool is a Cray supercomputer dubbed “Fish.” Watch the video a Cray Supercomputer Called Fish.

“There was a bunch of things in favor of a Cray XK6m™ supercomputer” said Greg Newby ARSC director. “Looking at the choice of rolling out more CPU cores and integrating the GPU cores, looking at the footprint, looking at the flops per watt, the theoretical compute capacity and anticipating there would be more and more users; all helped solidified our decision for a Cray.” said Newby.

“The state of Alaska is America’s arctic state. There is a very strong research emphasis focused on the types of phenomena that are of interest to the arctic topics involving climate, the weather, ocean and ocean ice. These are important things to the arctic and all of them are studied here in the arctic.” said Newby.

Since the April 2011 web launch, Frontier Scientists continues to share first person accounts and real time insights from leading archaeologists, grizzly bear biologists, volcano researchers, climate change specialists and other scientists.

Fascinating video of current scientific discoveries in some of the Arctic’s most remote and dramatic landscapes are chronicled in short videos, Twitter feeds, blogs and web reports. The research covers these categories:

• Alaska's Unmanned Aircraft Research
• Grizzlies
• Petroglyphs
• Paleo-Eskimo History
• Cook Inlet Volcanoes
• Alutiiq Weavers
• Climate Change Watch
• Arctic Winter Cruise
• Arctic Archaeology
• Computational Science
• Modeling Arctic Waters
• Permafrost
• Where Is Lake El'Gygytgyn?
• the Arctic's Amazing Birds

“We want to let travelers, teachers, students, aspiring scientists, and anyone else interested in science feel as if they are with scientists as they track grizzlies or take the temperature of permafrost in a borehole,” explained Liz O’Connell, video director for Frontier Scientists. Visitors to Frontier Scientists can ask questions to our scientists directly; follow some of them on Twitter and Facebook, and converse with scientists on their blogs.

Frontier Scientists is funded by the National Science Foundation, with additional support from the National Park Service and 360 Degrees North. Follow us!