PHYSICS

PPARC have now released a call to fund the next round of Grid computing for particle physics. GridPP will be co-ordinating responses to the call, which has a closing date of 13 July. PPARC anticipates that the new funding will cover 1 October 2007 to 31 March 2011. The call asks for applications to: - deliver the Tier-1 center for LHC and other experiments, including acting as a support centre for the UK particle physics Grid, linking to the smaller Tier-2 centres and providing a first point of call for user support to UK physicists. - provide Grid operations, middleware and common applications interfaces support required for the Tier 1 and Tier 2 centres. - provide project management, including methods to allocate resources. - Experiment-specific software and support was incorporated into the latest round of the rolling grant, so is not included in the call. It does, however, ask for a plan for collaboration with industry. Tony Doyle, GridPP Project Leader, welcomed the call, "We're pleased to receive the invitation to define and set up the UK's Grid for LHC Exploitation. We're looking forward to presenting PPARC with our proposals for the future of the particle physics Grid in the UK." The full call can be found at: its Web site.