World's Largest Particle Research Articles

Chemoinformatics, drug design, and systems biology.

In spite of its central role between physics and biology, chemistry has remained in a backward stateof informatics development compared to its two close relatives. Computers, public databases, andlarge collaborative projects have become the pervasive hallmark of research in physics and biology.The Human Genome Project, for instance, required collaboration among dozens if not hundreds ofscientists across the world. And the resulting human DNA sequence, as well as a wealth of otherbiological information, are available for anyone to download from public repositories on the Web suchas GenBank, Swissprot, the PDB, and PubMed. Virtually every biologist today uses publicly availabletools, such as BLAST, to search sequence databases and analyze high-throughput data. Similarobservations can be made in physics with large collaborative efiorts in, for instance astronomy or high-energy physics. The Web itself was born at CERN, a European consortium with over half a century ofhistory, and the world largest particle physics laboratory. In stark contrast, large collaborative efiortsand public databases and software are comparatively absent from chemical research.

Spin-offs from CERN and the case of TuoviWDM

Projects in big science generate technology that may have considerable impact on industry. Technology transfer is widely regarded as valuable in creating new products and companies, but the most effective modes of operation for this activity are rarely understood. This paper documents the catalyzing events, key obstacles and other influences at CERN during the 4-year journey of the TuoviWDM software project from its initiation in 1995 to the launching of a spin-off company in late 1998. The description proceeds in chronological order and focuses on the technological and organizational factors that have affected the innovation process. The TuoviWDM software is a WWW-based extended enterprise interface to product data management systems and to data vaults residing in proprietary information systems. A group of organizations uses this integrated whole to store and access information and to manage operational processes. The large projects and global user base at CERN provided the development team with an extremely flexible, occasionally surprisingly benign, and always challenging environment to develop the system. The opportunities to exploit the diversity hidden in the world's largest particle physics laboratory are immense. However, this case has again demonstrated that in a public sector organization the climate, the procedures, and the decision-making bodies, which are related to creation of technology and to technology transfer, may be supportive, irrelevant or even counter-productive. The goal of technology transfer activity should be to fertilize the industries of the participating countries rather than to try to obtain additional finance for the research organization. Policy makers need to compare the weight of these two aspects when technology transfer policies are formulated for big science organizations.

New Machine Sparks Rivalries at CERN

New Machine Sparks Rivalries at CERN

Budget Crunch Stalls Super Collider

Budget Crunch Stalls Super Collider

A Visit to the Serpukhov 76‐GeV Synchrotron

The world's largest particle accelerator, the 76‐GeV synchrotron at Serpukhov, is now producing 2×1011 protons/pulse and is expected to be doing experiments shortly. Groups from CERN and France are collaborating with Serpukhov scientists, and there is some hope for American participation, too. (Such international coöperation may, of course, be influenced by the Czechoslovakian situation.)