Carbon recycling: Mining the air for fuel
A solar energy collector at Sandia National Laboratories aims to recycle carbon dioxide into fuel with renewable energy. SNL photo.
Anyone who wants to create hydrocarbon fuel above ground will have to supply the energy to isolate the hydrogen and carbon atoms and put them together. "There’s no free lunch," says Hans Ziock, of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
"You have to put energy in to re-create the fuel," he explains. "And because re-creation is never 100 percent efficient, you end up putting more energy in than you get out." Due to the "energy penalty" of creating hydrocarbon fuel indirectly, he says, it has always made more sense for society to use the liquid fuels made directly from crude oil. (Full Story)
A similar story also appears in Carbon Capture Journal
Supercomputers to assist In thwarting bird flu epidemic in future
An early LANL influenza model tracks disease migration day 90. LANL image.
Supercomputers can now be used during health emergencies like predicting about the development of a diseases and its course as well. The research is by scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Washington, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
The large-scale, stochastic simulation model examines the nationwide spread of a pandemic influenza virus strain, such as an evolved avian H5N1 virus, should it become transmissible human-to-human. (Full Story)
A similar story also appears in Vaccine News Daily
Can social media impact epidemics?
Sara Del Valle. LANL photo.
Connecting social media and epidemiological research, a new study by Los Alamos National Laboratory and Tulane University will attempt to predict the future, i.e. people’s social behavior during an epidemic using Twitter.
"For instance, many people were skeptical about the H1N1 vaccine due to the accelerated approval process," said LANL's Sara Del Valle. "Through social media, we can quantify the degree to which some people were afraid and others were in favor." (Subscription required to see full story)
Also from the Monitor this week:
Thomas named ACS Fellow
Kimberly Thomas. LANL photo.
Kimberly Thomas, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Science and Technology Base Programs Office, has become the first Los Alamos researcher to be named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
With 33 years of service at the lab, Thomas has excelled in myriad research and management positions, including weapons radiochemical diagnostics, isotope separation, waste transmutation and nuclear waste management, environmental chemistry, study of nuclear reactions, and many other disciplines. (Subscription required to see full story)
Citizen Schools: Program boosts learning time, grades for middle-schoolers
Citizen Schools teachers all are professionals with four-year college degrees, though they are not necessarily licensed to teach. A mathematician from Los Alamos National Laboratory, for instance, might end up running a math tutorial. (Full Story)
Improved atomisation technology produces ultrafine powders for fossil fuel power plants
Gas atomised powders produced in the research project. NETL photo.
A smooth micro-porous metallic support surface was developed with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), for example for fabrication of robust hydrogen separation membranes from Pd alloy thin films approximately 2 µm thick.
A high pressure gas atomisation system was used to produce ultrafine powders which are said to have helped eliminate a major barrier to the use of new concepts for fabrication of hydrogen membranes for advanced coal fired power plants with CO2 capture capability. (Full story)
To subscribe to Los Alamos Report, please e-mail listmanager@lanl.gov and include the words subscribe losalamosreport in the body of your email message; to unscubscribe, include unsubscribe losalamosreport.
Please visit us at www.lanl.gov
And follow us on Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr
