XIAM007

Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Monday 22 April 2013

Supercomputer 'Edison' Will Perform 2 Quadrillion Operations a Second! -


Supercomputer 'Edison' Will Perform 2 Quadrillion Operations a Second! - 


Powerful computers can wreak havoc on U.S. stock markets, creating hair-raising volatility and eroding investor confidence in the lightning-fast search for profit.
But far more powerful computers could help save it.
High-speed trading now dominates U.S. stock markets, buying and selling in a fraction of the time that it takes to blink. Computers detecting rapid swings in prices and instantly reacting builds volatility and more trades, generating a sea of chaotic data and a vicious feedback loop that can lead to nightmares far worse than May 2010's infamous "flash crash."
Faster still is "Edison," a supercomputer tended by Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory scientists in a former Wells Fargo Bank building in downtown Oakland, Calif. Edison-like computers could track ultrafast trading across the nation's many markets, detecting precursors to a crash — and sounding early warnings for regulators seeking to avert a gruesome economic wreck.
It would be like a NASCAR race yellow flag warning drivers to slow down, scientists say.
"If improved monitoring and regulation can build some greater trust in the market, everyone benefits," said David H. Bailey, director of the lab's new Center for Innovative Financial Technology, which is building a bridge that links computational science and financial market communities.
Edison loves big data. Its idea of an average day is simulating a supernova explosion, measuring the expanding universe's rate of acceleration. Or modeling 150 years of Earth's future climate change — in three dimensions.
When fully deployed later this year, Edison will perform as many as 2 quadrillion operations a second. How big is that number? Two quadrillion cups of water would fill Lake Tahoe twice.
Tracking every trade, in real time, on every U.S. stock exchange? No big deal.
"That data size — we routinely do 10 times that much. Easily. It's a trivial matter," said Bailey, a leading figure in both high-performance scientific computing and computational mathematics.
Not so long ago, life was simpler. U.S. stock markets moved at a human pace, simply matching buyers with sellers. But now many exchanges take place. And more than half of all trading is done by high-speed computer "traders" that live their electronic lives in server parks.
Most agree that computer trading is good for the average investor because it's inexpensive. But it also triggers unpredictably large price swings — causing widespread Maalox moments. It's breeding distrust in the market.
The "flash crash" of 2010 was triggered by a single firm using algorithms to rapidly sell 75,000 futures contracts.
In moments, the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 700 points, or almost 10 percent, and quickly recovered.
Since then, numerous mini-flash crashes and other anomalies have slapped around stock values and investor confidence.
"Electronic markets ... seem capable of impressively flaky behavior," said Lawrence Berkeley Lab's David Leinweber, a computer scientist, former investment manager and algorithmic trading specialist.
"We are lost in the jungle when it comes to our ability to understand ever-faster markets well enough to keep them safe, stable and secure," he said.
Regulators with weak and incompatible computer systems have set safeguards. One uses shutdown switches — "circuit breakers" — to halt all trading. A second, called "limit up, limit down," cancels trades outside a normal price range.
But these, asserted Leinweber, are like applying the rules of the road to aircraft. Slowing, rather than suddenly halting, markets is less traumatic.
In early 2011, using the lab's Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer, Leinweber's team found that a supercomputer could use a recently identified measure to warn of a looming flash crash.
Called Volume-synchronized Probability of INformed trading, or VPIN, it detects an imbalance between buy and sell orders, and growing volatility, about 45 minutes before a crash. It reveals "flow toxicity," that is, when high-tech traders' computers generate so many buy or sell orders that it becomes all but impossible to match orders. Amid this volatility, one side will stop trading to stem its losses, causing a sudden drop of prices that triggers an avalanche of similar withdrawals called a "flash crash."
A second measure of market instability, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, or HHI, also rose sharply for some stocks, although not for others.
These two signals of instability — and that uneasy feeling that someone else has more information than you — do not give a clear direction of specific trades, said the lab's John Wu. So they're not likely to be exploited by someone hoping to jump in and profit.


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Americans 'snapping' by the millions... - record fear, stress, suicide -


Americans 'snapping' by the millions... - record fear, stress, suicide - 


Terrorism. Chaos. Fear of the future. In the age of Obama, America is undergoing a “fundamental transformation” – that much everyone knows.

But what few seem to realize about this transformation is that the sheer stress of living in today’s America is driving tens of millions to the point of illness, depression and self-destruction. Consider the following trends:

Suicide has surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of injury death for Americans. Even more disturbing, in the world’s greatest military, more U.S. soldiers died last year by suicide than in combat;
Fully one-third of the nation’s employees suffer chronic debilitating stress, and more than half of all “millennials” (18 to 33 year olds) experience a level of stress that keeps them awake at night, including large numbers diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorder.
Shocking new research from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that one in five of all high-school-aged children in the United States has been diagnosed with ADHD, and likewise a large new study of New York City residents shows, sadly, that one in five preteens – children aged six to 12 – have been medically diagnosed with either ADHD, anxiety, depression or bipolar disorder;
New research concludes that stress renders people susceptible to serious illness, and a growing number of studies now confirm that chronic stress plays a major role in the progression of cancer, the nation’s second-biggest killer. The biggest killer of all, heart disease, which causes one in four deaths in the U.S., is also known to have a huge stress component;
Incredibly, 11 percent of all Americans aged 12 and older are currently taking SSRI antidepressants – those highly controversial, mood-altering psychiatric drugs with the FDA’s “suicidality” warning label and alarming correlation with school shooters. Women are especially prone to depression, with a stunning 23 percent of all American women in their 40s and 50s – almost one in four – now taking antidepressants, according to a major study by the CDC;
Add to that the tens of millions of users of all other types of psychiatric drugs, including (just to pick one) the 6.4 million American children between 4 and 17 diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin or similar psycho-stimulants. Throw in the 28 percent of American adults with a drinking problem, that’s more than 60 million, plus the 22 million using illegal drugs like marijuana, cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens and inhalants, and pretty soon a picture emerges of a nation of drug-takers, with hundreds of millions dependent on one toxic substance or another – legal or illegal – to “help” them deal with the stresses and problems of life.
By the way, things are no better over the pond – and may be worse, according to one major study that concluded almost 40 percent of Europeans are plagued by mental illness.


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Children as young as four are becoming so addicted to smartphones and iPads that they require psychological treatment -


Children as young as four are becoming so addicted to smartphones and iPads that they require psychological treatment - 


Experts have warned that parents who allow babies and toddlers to access tablet computers for several hours a day are in danger of causing “dangerous” long term effects.
The youngest known patient being treated in the UK is a four-year-old girl from the South East.
Her parents enrolled her for compulsive behaviour therapy after she became increasingly “distressed and inconsolable” when the iPad was taken away from her.
Her use of the device had escalated over the course of a year and she had become addicted to using it up for to four hours a day.
Dr Richard Graham, who launched the UK’s first technology addiction programme three years ago, said he believed there were many more addicts of her age.

Read more - 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10008707/Toddlers-becoming-so-addicted-to-iPads-they-require-therapy.html