LANL researchers garner fellows prize

The Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellows organization has selected five researchers as recipients of the 2010 Fellows Prizes, which honor exemplary scientific research and leadership. The Fellows organization includes some of the Laboratory’s most prominent scientists. (Full Story)


Lab completes new monitoring wells

Efficiencies in contracting and construction scheduling saved sufficient funds to construct additional wells.

Los Alamos National Laboratory has completed 16 new groundwater monitoring wells funded with $45 million from federal economic-stimulus money.

The wells are part of a system the lab installed to monitor aquifers for possible contaminants from legacy Manhattan Project waste and current LANL operations. (Full Story)

The Associated Press also covered the well story.



Safety Engineers host symposium, take a fresh look at safety

Todd Conklin. LANL photo

Keynote speaker Dr. Todd Conklin, a renowned authority on organizational behavior from Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM, will provide attendees with a look at human performance and why changing perceptions of human error is key to enhancing safety. (Full Story)



Pulitzer winner explores world without nukes

Richard Rhodes, author of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." Random House photo.

The question posed by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Saturday at the end of a talk about his most recent book was this: Can we, should we, will we get to zero nuclear weapons?

Terry Hawkins, a senior manager in the Global Security directorate at LANL, warned about "a new country developing around the world." He said the new world is called "Cyberia." (Full Story)



Greenland ice drips away at record speed

Melting Greenland ice runoff.

Research scientist Sebastian Mernild of Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US said his calculations show that 540 cubic kilometres of inland ice, weighing approx. 500 gigatons, have melted this summer, which is 25-50% more than in a typical year. (Full Story)



From nukes to teeth implants . . .

A three-year effort by experts at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, several Russian scientific institutes and tech firm Manhattan Scientifics led to the use of nanotitanium, a super-strong metal, to make dental implants that are more reliable and longer-lasting. (Full Story)

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Consortium to design human trials of mosaic HIV vaccine

Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher Bette Korber is part of an international team of investigators working to design and implement the first human trial of a mosaic HIV vaccine candidate.

Mosaic vaccines are composed of many sets of synthetic, computer-generated sequences of proteins that can prompt the immune system to respond to a wide variety of circulating HIV strains (full story).

News coverage also appeared in the Los Alamos Monitor.

Scanner would allow liquids to pass through airport security checkpoints

The latest airport security technology being developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory could open the door for airline passengers to bring their soft drinks and full-size shampoo bottles on board again.

Homeland security officials put the latest generation of the bottled liquid scanner to the test Wednesday during a demonstration at Albuquerque's international airport (full story).


Stories about the MagViz scanner also appeared in numerous other places, including Jane's and on ABC News.

View LANL’s own YouTube video about the technology demonstration:



Weapons technology repurposed

A group of ground-breaking American and Russian scientists are taking Cold War weapons technology and repurposing it for peaceful use in medical prosthetics and dental implants.

Nanotitanium is the product of a collaboration of U.S. scientists at LANL and Russian weapons technology scientists who teamed together under direction from the U.S. Global Initiative for Proliferation Prevention at the U.S. Dept. of Energy (full story).

MORE CONTEXT: TV coverage from last year about LANL’s agreement with Manhattan Scientifics, which paved the way for further development of nanotitanium technology is available here.





Watch NASA’s Mars Rover being built via live “curiosity Cam”
Includes LANL’s ChemCam instrument.

Watch here!









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New scanner aims to make liquids on planes safer

MagViz technology is explained by Stephen Surko, a Homeland Security program manager. AP photo.

The latest airport security technology being developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory could open the door for airline passengers to bring their soft drinks and full-size shampoo bottles on board again.

Los Alamos scientist Michelle Espy said she knows what it's like to be in a checkpoint and have her young daughter's bottle taken away. "This would be a very great solution, a quick solution," she said. "Obviously, the end goal is to be able to seamlessly, without slowing anything down, just let people take their liquids on." (Full Story)


Liquid scanner could hit airports

LANL's Michelle Espy demonstrates the technology to reporters. From KRQE-TV.

Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists showed off a machine Wednesday that could give back some freedom to travelers who must obey strict restrictions when flying.

LANL scientist Michelle Espy showed off a liquid scanner at the Sunport that reads through bottles and even aluminum cans without opening the containers. The machine tells security whether a liquid is safe or not. (Full Story)

Additional television coverage includes stories from KOB-TV and KOAT-TV in Albuquerque.


Bombing Earth-bound asteroids a viable option, experts say

The asteroid Itokawa, as seen by the Hayabusa spacecraft in 2005. Sensor data courtesy JAXA.

Considering the damage a large asteroid strike could do to humanity, bombing any so-called near-Earth objects, or NEOs, headed our way might be a viable last resort "if we have the international political will," said Robert Weaver of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Catherine Plesko, also of the Los Alamos lab, and her colleague Don Korycansky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, used computer programs to model the explosion of a rubble-pile asteroid a half mile (one kilometer) wide, which is large enough to cause global destruction when intact. (Full Story)


Solar winds research could improve outer-space weather forecasts

Plasma particles spiral off from the sun in a network of tubes, depicted here in blue. LANL image.

"There's about 10 particles per cubic centimeter, protons and electrons," said Joseph Borovsky, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who has analyzed 81/2 years of data from the Advanced Composition Explorer satellite. "It's hot — about 200 degrees — and fast. It adds up to a lot of mass per second," Borovsky said. (Full Story)


New kind of uranium could power your car

Scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory have created a long-sought molecule known as uranium nitride. Besides offering cheaper and safer nuclear fuel, the new molecule could extract more energy from fossil fuels. (Full Story)


New class of metal for dental prosthetics to be introduced

Nanotitanium is the product of a collaboration of American scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Russian scientists to repurpose weapons technology for peaceful means. According to co-inventor Dr. Lowe, it is a breakthrough advancement for the prosthetics and medical device industry. (Full Story)


2 New Mexico nuke sites get awards

Also named to receive [pollution prevention] awards were New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California also received awards. (Full Story)

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New kind of uranium could power your car

Scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory have created a long-sought molecule known as uranium nitride. Besides offering cheaper and safer nuclear fuel, the new molecule could extract more energy from fossil fuels, making cars more fuel-efficient, and could also lead to cheaper drugs.

"Actinide nitrides are candidate nuclear fuels of the future," said Jaqueline Kiplinger, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory who led the team of researchers on the recent Nature Chemistry paper (full story).

Supercomputers assist cleanup of decades-old nuclear waste

A research team led by Peter C. Lichtner of Los Alamos National Laboratory is using the Oak Ridge Jaguar supercomputer to build a three-dimensional model of an underground uranium waste plume at the Hanford Site's 300 Area.

A better understanding of the underground migration properties of uranium, which has infiltrated the Columbia River, may aid stakeholders in weighing options for contaminant remediation (full story).

National Network of Digital Schools launches STEM planet

The National Network of Digital Schools is proud to announce the launch of STEMplanet.org, a new and innovative forum website designed to spark interest in and prepare today's students for careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

For over 2 years, NNDS has been at the forefront of STEM education in America. Through collaboration with scientific staff at Los Alamos National Laboratory, they have developed the Cutting Edge Science program (full story).

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NSF funds computer systems research center at New Mexico Consortium in Los Alamos

The National Science Foundation has announced a $10 million award to the New Mexico Consortium at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Utah to build and operate the Parallel Reconfigurable Observational Environment (PRObE), a one-of-a-kind computer systems research center. (Full Story)


The math and science of baseball

The Boston Red Sox meet the Tampa Bay Rays at Fenway Park in 2008, the 456th consecutive sellout, setting a new MLB record. Reuters photo.

Major-league baseball teams play 162 games in the regular season. While that may sound like a lot, it isn't nearly enough to ensure that the best team in the league ends the season with the best record [according to] a pair of physicists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Their statistical analysis indicates that for the best team of any league to be assured of having the best win-loss record, the number of games on the schedule should be roughly the number of teams cubed. (Full Story)


Meltdown in Greenland: inland ice drips away at record speed

Melting water runs off a glacier in Greenland. AP photo.

The Danish research scientist Sebastian Mernild of Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US told national daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten that his calculations show that 540 cubic kilometres of inland ice have melted this summer, 25-50% more than in a typical year. (Full Story)


How to land on a comet: Go south, approach with caution

Artist's concept of the Rosetta spacecraft approaching Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. ESA illustration.

A spacecraft that's been chasing a comet for six years should drop its lander on the ice ball's southern half when it finally catches up, a new study suggests.

"Southern sites appear to be both the safest and the most scientifically interesting," study co-author Jeremie Lasue of Los Alamos National Laboratory said in a statement. (Full Story)


Los Alamos National Laboratory selects SGI Altix XE
to support scientific research

SGI today announced that Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, has selected SGI to provide a computing solution to enhance an existing unclassified institution-wide computing capacity. (Full Story)


JPL gets ‘photon gun’ to study Martian rocks

Roger Wiens, ChemCam principal investigator, examines the rover’s calibration target. LANL photo.

The ChemCam instrument has completed the first short leg of its long trip to Mars, arriving at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory from Los Alamos National Laboratory for installation aboard the next Mars rover, due to launch in 2011.

The NASA Mars Science Laboratory Project's rover, Curiosity, will carry the newly delivered laser instrument to reveal which elements are present in Mars’ rocks and soils up to 7 meters (23 feet) away from the rover. (Full Story)


Lab starts demo work at TA-54

Dome 281 formerly housed a low-level waste compactor. LANL photo.

Los Alamos National Laboratory recently began to demolish Dome 281 — a 4,100-square- foot metal and fabric dome at the lab’s Technical Area 54.

It’s the next step in LANL’s multi-year closure plan for TA-54, which must be complete by 2015 under the Consent Order cleanup agreement with the state of New Mexico. (Full Story)


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