Every six months or so, a team of scientists from the University of Manheim in Germany, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee in the USA, puts together a list of the 500 fastest supercomputers on the planet.

The latest edition lists China as the home of the world’s fastest supercomputer. It’s called Tianhe-1A and was developed by China’s National University of Defence Technology. In a list traditionally dominated by the US, which has over 200 computers in the top 500, China comes second with 41 while India lags behind with just four, and none in the top 10.

Of course, this position is a bit deceptive, because neither country really makes the supercomputers. The hardware still comes from a single destination — Silicon Valley in the US. So, strictly speaking, it’s still the United States that is at the head of the field, even though the array that does the most in the least time is located in another country.

Along with the development of public scientific base, another task is to provide incentives for companies which take advantage of new knowledge and technologies. Among companies, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as important engines of economic growth with the highest expected potential should be engaged in research and technological development (RTD) activities, possibly in cooperation with other companies, technology centres, universities and public research institutions.

While preparing instruments for SMEs, large companies, which account for seventy per cent of all industrial RTD expenditure, should nevertheless be overlooked. In order to support both SMEs and large companies in their RTD endeavour in Slovenia tax allowances were introduced in 2006.

Source: Slovenian Technology Agency

WASHINGTON — Two asteroids were set to pass close to Earth on Wednesday but posed no risk, the US space agency NASA said.

NASA said its sky observation from Arizona discovered the objects on September 5. One asteroid was believed to be 10 to 20 meters (32 to 65 feet) in size and was expected to pass within 248,000 kilometers (154,000 miles) of Earth at 0951 GMT...

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