We Have The Technology - What Do You Want To Do With It?

• World’s fastest supercomputer at your service 
• Scottish students’ ideas wanted
• Youngsters urged to speak up in global conversation

Imagine you had the power of the world’s fastest computer at your fingertips, what would you ask it to do?
 
Help tackle climate change? Find new cures for disease? Solve some of the mysteries of space? Or even find out if time travel is possible?
 
Scottish students now have the chance to put forward their ideas on how the K Computer, recently unveiled in Japan, could be used to tackle challenges facing the world.
 
The computer, created by technology company Fujitsu in partnership with the RIKEN research institute in Japan, boasts speeds of more than four times that of its nearest competitor.    
 
It was developed under an initiative led by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology to solve energy, sustainability, healthcare, climate change, industrial and space challenges.
 
The K Computer can process large-scale advanced computations and generate computer simulations too complex for conventional computers to handle.
 
Computer simulations make it possible to reproduce and investigate phenomena which are difficult to experiment on in real life, including road safety testing on cars, developing new medicines or improving disaster-prevention technology.
 
To mark the computer’s arrival, Fujitsu has started a global campaign to encourage worldwide conversations on how its power could best be harnessed.
 
Using the website MyKindaCrowd.com that discussion is being taken into schools, colleges and universities to seek creative suggestions from young people.  The website is free to join and links businesses and organisations with schools and colleges in the UK, setting young people challenges in which they can participate.
 
For the Fujitsu challenge there are two competitions running for the next four months with the under 18s winner receiving £1,000 towards equipment for their school and the over 18s winner receiving a similar amount towards kick-starting their career.
 
Entries can take any form, from a written essay to a poem or song, or a painting to a PowerPoint presentation.
 
Alastair Millar, the Inverness-based service delivery manager on Fujitsu’s £66 million contract to replace and upgrade The Highland Council’s office and schools IT systems, outlined the competition at a recent STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) event run by the Scottish Council for Development and Industry at Eden Court Theatre in Inverness.
 
Ideas the youngsters came up with included using the computer to help find missing people, solving crime, seeking cures for leukaemia, warning of natural disasters and even helping them doing their homework.
 
Alastair Millar said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for students to join in this global conversation and engage with people around the world on such an innovative project.
 
“We want to encourage as many young people as possible to put forward their ideas and be as creative and imaginative as possible. As well as being stimulating educationally it could also be rewarding for the student or their school.
 
“At the Inverness event we had groups from schools coming up with imaginative uses of this super computer to solve real world issues.”   
Other ideas have been submitted from people around the world on the internet and social networking sites.
 
One man suggested using the K computer to map the human brain to understand autism, another to help it crack an unsolved murder where encrypted notes found on a dead body have eluded decryption by detectives for many years.
 
Other suggestions include recording earthquakes around the world to check for emerging patterns to potentially avoid future disasters; monitoring patterns of solar flares and sun-storms which affect the earth's temperature; and studying electricity usage patterns around the world to help industrial location planning.
 
However some men were more tongue in cheek.  One sent the message: “I would use the world’s fastest supercomputer to understand the female brain”.
 
While another added hopefully: “I wouldn't mind figuring out why my wife and daughter need so many shoes.”
 
The K computer gets its name from the Japanese Kanji letter "Kei" which means ten peta or 10 to the 16th power (1, followed by 16 zeros).
Ten quadrillion worth of computations is equivalent to the world’s seven billion people each performing one computation per second, 24 hours a day for about 17 days. The K computer will be able to do all of those computations in just one second.    
 
The competition runs until the end of the summer term. Entries are submitted by schools, colleges and universities signing up to the MyKindaCrowd website - www.mykindacrowd.com/challenges/
 
MyKindaCrowd promotes hundreds of challenges set by companies or organisations which give students the chance to win prizes, cash, work-experience and even jobs.
 
The challenges can provide useful and interesting tests for students while for companies it can provide some innovative thinking and a direct link to potential future employees.
 
End

For further information please contact:
 
Peter Kane: 44 (0)7742 308213; peter@lucidmessages.com
John Ross: 44 (0)7730 099617; johnross@lucidmessages.com
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