HOLYOKE -- Mapping Lou Gehrig's Disease occupies one researcher. Others study banana blight in Costa Rica and ways to predict earthquakes.
Some keep busy charting the human brain and the science of how fluids move.
These are among the topics being analyzed with the tens of thousands of computers humming in the $165 million Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center on Bigelow Street between Appleton and Cabot streets.
"We're cooking every day," John T. Goodhue, computing center executive director, said Wednesday (Sept. 2).
With the computing center approaching its three-year anniversary, The Republican and MassLive.com requested a tour to get an update about the facility operated by internationally known partners.
The partners are Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts, Boston University, Northeastern University, EMC Corp., of Hopkinton, an information storage, back-up and recovery firm, and Cisco Systems Inc., a California-based internet network equipment maker.
Tapping the acre-sized room of computers in the red-brick and glass facility doesn't require that the scientists and professors doing such explorations actually be in Holyoke. Codes typed into a computer anywhere by authorized researchers achieves such access, Goodhue said.
John E. Landers, associate professor in the UMass Department of Neurology, is examining genomes to learn the workings of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig's Disease, Goodhue said.
ALS affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord and is named after Gehrig, the legendary New York Yankee first baseman who died from it in 1941.
"We forever have been unable to figure out the cause and how it works," Goodhue said.
A genome is the complete set of a person's DNA, which carries genetic information in cells that determine gender, eye and hair color, whether someone is impulsive or prone to certain diseases and thousands of other characteristics. The human genome contains approximately 3 billion pairs of DNA strands.
Landers is comparing the genomes of a healthy person and someone with ALS. A desk-top computer possesses the power to allow for a sifting and analyzing of all of the data that exists in such a genome comparison that would take two years, Goodhue said.
The computing center achieves such a comparison in two weeks, he said.
"I think the key thing is you can do it so much faster that it's feasible. I think without these computers, you wouldn't even consider doing the experiment," he said.
Li-Jun Ma, an assistant professor in the UMass Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, is using the computing center to study what led to the blight of banana plantations in Costa Rica and other countries, he said.
Other researchers are analyzing the neurons in the human brain and how connections are made, the dynamics of fluids such as how flow can be affected by acoustics and photosynthesis. Findings in the analysis of photosynthesis, the process in which plants convert sunlight into sugar and oxygen, could lead to improvements in the manufacturing of materials to support bridges and solar panels, he said.
Great, critics say, but what good is the computing center on a daily basis to the average Holyoker?
The computing center opened Nov. 16, 2012 on property whose previous occupant was Mastex Industries, which made fabric used for airbags and Armed Forces and industrial uses.
"The (computing center) has been a great development for the downtown and an even better partner in the community," said Marcos A. Marrero, director of the city Department of Planning and Economic Development.
Constructing the computing center occupied a nearly 9-acre site that was sitting contaminated and unused. The brownfield site was cleaned and millions of dollars in new water and sewer pipes and other infrastructure were installed, he said.
Having the computing center as an anchor tenant in the area known as the Innovation District -- encompassing properties inside and facing Main, Appleton, Maple and Dwight streets -- has given Holyoke attention from public agencies and private companies, he said.
Examples include the opening last week of the Holyoke Passenger Rail Platform at Depot Square at Main and Dwight streets; the SPARK entrepreneurship program; the pending arrival of the Holyoke Community College Center for Hospitality and Culinary Excellence; and programs with the public schools like a forum in which engineers talked about their jobs with Morgan School students, Marrero and Goodhue said.
"The building itself also serves as a clear calling card: when MIT, UMass, B.U., Northeastern and Harvard universities all decide to invest in your city, and you have such a significant investment in the downtown, it helps shift the paradigm on what is possible and what people can aspire to have," Marrero said.
The computing center offers a unique presence when companies go looking for locations, Goodhue and Marrero said.
"I think it's accurate to say we have, as kind of an anchor tenant, made this a more preferential place to come and locate your business, and you're seeing it with Gateway City Arts, the Cubit building ...," Goodhue said.
The computing center is tax exempt, but in 2013 agreed to pay the city $80,000 a year based on the annual tax revenue due on the property before the center took over the seven parcels that comprise the site.
The "why Holyoke?" was another hot question when former Gov. Deval L. Patrick announced in 2009 that the computing center would be built here.
The answer lies in the 1800s, when city founders realized the potential of the Connecticut River and took advantage of the city's grade and the flow of the river to build the hydroelectric dam.
The computing center, overlooking the dam's first-level canal, needed a steady and relatively affordable supply of power such as what it gets from the dam, owned by the Holyoke Gas and Electric Department.
The computing center uses 15 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 15,000 homes.
The renewable energy that is the flow of the river is partly where the "green," or environmentally friendly, part of the computing center's name comes from.
In 2013, the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit organization, awarded the computing center its highest rating of platinum certification.
Among the computing center's noted green steps, officials have said:
--uses outside air to chill water to cool computers, requiring the activation of its cooling machinery only 30 percent of the time;
--uses a chilled water storage tank that lets the center activate the chilling machinery, when the air outside is too warm, at off-peak hours when electricity rates are lower;
--containment areas and a variable-speed fanning system allow for regulation of temperature and pressure;
--of the material used to build the center, 25 percent was recycled.
Goodhue is serious when he says the number of individual computers in the 90,300-square-foot building is 10,000 multiplied several times.
The room housing the computers is called unsurprisingly the Computer Room. Imagine the floor of an arena like the MassMutual Center in Springfield. Now picture that floor lined end-to-end with rows of black metal cabinets and within each cabinet is a stack of hundreds of computers.
Erected above the high-tech locker room of cabinets is a lattice of gray and yellow metal beams, black tubes and orange wires that connects, with the use of fiber optic cables, the computers to the outside world.
The floor beneath the Computer Room contains power distribution and cooling machines the size of single-car garages, cooling being vital with so many computers percolating at once, Goodhue said.
"It would get very hot, very quickly. So think about having a 1-million-watt space heater in your home," he said.
Hacking is a concept Goodhue deflects. With thousands of cases of invasions of computers at every federal agency from the Smithsonian Institute to the Interior Department, along with companies like Home Depot and Target, hacking is an obvious concern at a place with "computing" in its name.
"We are very careful," Goodhue said. "The good news is Massachusetts universities have some of the best security experts on the planet. So far, we've done quite well."
On an average day, the computing center will have three varieties of people within, he said: 15 employees in shifts that staff the center round the clock; anywhere from three to 20 technicians installing or maintaining the equipment, as well as other visitors using computer and office spaces; and local groups taking advantage of meeting spaces made available to the public.
Each year, 8,000 to 9,000 people come through the computing center, he said.