Image: Courtesy of the Sci Institute, NLM, and Theoretical Biophysics Group of the Beckman Institute at UIUC
 THE MIND'S EYE: A researcher maps the human brain using a large-scale visualization theater.

Imagine standing in a room, with a three-dimensional HIV-1 protease floating before your eyes. As big as a boulder, the enzyme's craggy surface seems so close you can almost touch it. But put out your hands, and you'll touch naught but air.

Welcome to the Delaware Biotechnology Institute's (DBI) Visualization Studio. In a darkened room on the campus of the University of Delaware, Newark, research assistant Praveen Thiagarajan is showing off the DBI's newest core facility. The Studio's most obvious feature is a 100-square-foot display with a resolution of nearly 2,500 x 1,024 pixels. But behind the scenes--both literally and figuratively--lies the system's heart: a Silicon Graphics (SGI) Reality Center®, powered by a six-processor SGI Onyx 3200...

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