The MathWorks News & Notes - January 2006

Welcome to The Mathworks News & Notes

We redesigned The MathWorks News & Notes by merging the best of MATLAB News & Notes and its German counterpart, MATLAB Select, and giving the entire magazine a new look and feel.

This issue showcases user applications of MATLAB and Simulink—from exploring a moon of Saturn to harnessing the electronic signals of the human brain. You can read about Mercedes-AMG’s advanced approach to rapid prototyping, the drama behind the ESA-NASA Huygens space probe mission to Titan, g.tec’s research on using brain waves to control a computer user interface, and the application of Xilinx tools in narrowband communications system development. We hope that you find these articles compelling and relevant to your own work.

Many of you are solving computationally intensive problems with very large data sets. As cluster computing systems become less expensive, easier to set up, and more commonplace, there are more opportunities to use distributed systems for such calculations. Our cover story describes new capabilities for distributing MATLAB applications on computer clusters, with an example of coarse-grained geospatial analysis.

While we have made significant changes to the magazine, we’ve kept popular columns and features, such as “Cleve’s Corner,” “Programming Patterns,” technical tips, new product highlights, MathWorks news updates, and listings of new products, services, and books.

We value your feedback as we plan future issues. What do you like about the revamped magazine? How can we improve it further? What other types of content would you like to see? Send your comments to newsnotes@mathworks.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Jim Tung
MathWorks Fellow