Apple Science Profiles

This Apple Science podcast features Dr. Fernando Cucchietti, scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who credits his presentation skills in giving him an advantage when applying for grants—and even in helping him get his job. Cucchietti uses a combination of tools to build graphics for his presentations, ultimately importing and organizing his files in Keynote, part of Apple’s iWork ’08 suite of productivity applications. Dr. Cucchietti noticed that the system never crashed. He started doing short simulations on it and found he never had to reboot. Before switching to Apple technology, he used Linux. His favorite open-source applications and programs were written to work with any flavor of UNIX. In the event that he or his colleagues ever want to use Linux-specific applications or do any Linux development, it’s easy to install and run Linux on a Mac.

This Apple science podcast features physicist Dr. Brian Cox of the University of Manchester. He works as a particle physicist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, where the world’s biggest Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will attempt to recreate the Big Bang in miniature. Cox has gained a following for his presentation skills and ability to communicate complex ideas surrounding particle science concepts to lay-audiences. CERN’s team of more than 10,000 scientists, most with a UNIX background, found the Mac Book Pro running Mac OS X solved the problem of two or more machines while allowing them to run legacy Fortran particle science programs and productivity applications. For transporting his equipment and knowledge base from the research lab to the presentation stage, Cox relies on his MacBook Air. Apple’s ability to sync and support multiple platforms plays a crucial part in the biggest scientific research experiment ever attempted.

This Apple Science podcast features Ned Gardiner and the producers at the American Museum of Natural History, who looked to Apple when they needed a next-generation environment for creating high-definition Science Bulletins. Underpinning the Science Bulletins production pipeline are 18 Mac notebooks and desktop systems, three Xserve G5 servers, and six Xserve RAID arrays – a collaborative environment that leverages a 23-terabyte Xsan network via GB Ethernet and Fibre Channel. AMNH is 100% Mac. Scientist Ned Gardiner processes images from raw satellite readings and other data on his 17-inch MacBook Pro. Animators turn 2D images into interactive 3D animations on Power Mac G5 Quad computers and collaborate with producers via the 23TB Xsan production SAN using QuickTime 7 movies accessed with VirtualVTR. The team delivers the final product in multiple formats, from 1080i HD MPEG-2 files for display in museums to QuickTime movies for the Web. Transforming scientific and satellite data into intuitive, interactive HD visualizations required a powerful, collaborative pipeline to say the least – and Mac delivered.