Computer simulation

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A computer simulation, a computer model or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system. Computer simulations have become a useful part of mathematical modeling of many natural systems in physics (computational physics), chemistry and biology, human systems in economics, psychology, and social science and in the process of engineering new technology, to gain insight into the operation of those systems, or to observe their behavior.

Computer simulations vary from computer programs that run a few minutes, to network-based groups of computers running for hours, to ongoing simulations that run for days. The scale of events being simulated by computer simulations has far exceeded anything possible (or perhaps even imaginable) using the traditional paper-and-pencil mathematical modeling: over 10 years ago, a desert-battle simulation, of one force invading another, involved the modeling of 66,239 tanks, trucks and other vehicles on simulated terrain around Kuwait, using multiple supercomputers in the DoD High Performance Computer Modernization Program; a 1-billion-atom model of material deformation (2002); a 2.64-million-atom model of the complex maker of protein in all organisms, a ribosome, in 2005; and the Blue Brain project at EPFL (Switzerland), began in May 2005, to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level.

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News tagged with computer model

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New computer model could lead to safer stents

New computer model could lead to safer stents

Medicine & Health / Research

created Dec 02, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- After suffering heart attacks, patients often receive stents designed to hold their arteries open. Some of these stents release drugs that are meant to halt tissue growth in arteries, but ...


Researchers develop virtual streams to help restore real ones

Physics / General Physics

created Nov 24, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a unique new computer model called the Virtual StreamLab, designed to help restore real streams to a healthier state. The Virtual StreamLab, which demonstrates the ...


Glimpsing a greener future

Glimpsing a greener future: Computer model foresees effects of alternative transportation fuels

Space & Earth / Environment

created Nov 16, 2009 | popularity 2.5 / 5 (4) | comments 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- It's the year 2060, and 75 percent of drivers in the Greater Los Angeles area have hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that emit only water vapor.


Research gives new insights into 4 billion year-old meteorites

Research gives new insights into 4 billion year-old meteorites

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 12, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have gained new insight into the makeup of ancient meteorites called Carbonaceous Chondrites, in research published in the October edition of the journal Earth Science and Planetary Le ...


Too much entanglement can render quantum computers useless

Physics / Quantum Physics

created May 25, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (20) | comments 4

(PhysOrg.com) -- "For certain tasks, quantum computers are more powerful than their classical counterparts. The task to be performed is the same for quantum or classical systems. However, the former ones can do it in a more ...


Longer toes eyed as sprinters' edge

Longer toes eyed as sprinters' edge

Biology / Other

created Nov 12, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Longer toes may give sprinters a leg up on other runners, according to a new study.


Spotting evidence of directed percolation

Spotting evidence of directed percolation

Physics / General Physics

created Nov 17, 2009 | popularity 3.5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

A team of physicists has, for the first time, seen convincing experimental evidence for directed percolation, a phenomenon that turns up in computer models of the ways diseases spread through a population ...


Earth and the Sun

Study: Small fluctuations in solar activity, large influence on the climate

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Aug 27, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (15) | comments 9

(PhysOrg.com) -- Subtle connections between the 11-year solar cycle, the stratosphere, and the tropical Pacific Ocean work in sync to generate periodic weather patterns that affect much of the globe, according ...


Milky Way Galaxy

Physicists on the prowl for dark matter

Physics / General Physics

created Jul 23, 2009 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (33) | comments 89

(PhysOrg.com) -- 95%. That is the percentage of the known Universe that is missing. As in it is not there. Or at least if it is there, we can't see it. We call this unseen stuff "dark matter". That has been ...


Toddlers develop individualized rules for grammar

Other Sciences / Other

created Oct 05, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (12) | comments 3

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using advanced computer modeling and statistical analysis, a University of Texas at Austin linguistics professor has found that toddlers develop their own individual structures for using language that are ...


Cryptomartus hindi

Scary ancient spiders revealed in 3-D models, thanks to new imaging technique (w/ Video)

Biology / Other

created Aug 05, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (8) | comments 0

Early relatives of spiders that lived around 300 million years ago are revealed in new three-dimensional models, in research published today in the journal Biology Letters.


Interactions with Aerosols Boost Warming Potential of Some Gases

Interactions with Aerosols Boost Warming Potential of Some Gases

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Oct 29, 2009 | popularity 3.2 / 5 (5) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- For decades, climate scientists have worked to identify and measure key substances -- notably greenhouse gases and aerosol particles -- that affect Earth’s climate. And they’ve been aided ...


Ideal nanoparticle cancer therapies surf the bloodstream

Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine

created Nov 09, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Eric Shaqfeh studies blood at Stanford University, using computer models that simulate how the fluid and the cells it contains move around. On November 11 at a meeting of the scientific society AVS, he will present his latest ...


Feds designate 'critical habitat' for polar bear (AP)

Feds designate polar bear habitat in Alaska

Biology / Ecology

created Oct 22, 2009 | popularity 2.9 / 5 (7) | comments 1

(AP) -- The Obama administration said Thursday it is designating more than 200,000 square miles in Alaska and off its coast as "critical habitat" for polar bears, an action that could add restrictions to ...


New funding will stimulate alternative energy research

Technology / Energy

created Nov 16, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Initiatives to provide geothermal heating or power at the Pueblo of Jemez and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology campus are receiving Los Alamos National Laboratory assistance, thanks to recent American Reinvestment ...