Los Alamos achieves world-record pulsed magnetic field
Researchers at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory’s Pulsed Field Facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory have set a new world record for the strongest magnetic field produced by a nondestructive magnet.
The record puts the Los Alamos team within reach of delivering a magnet capable of achieving 100 tesla, a goal long sought by researchers from around the world, including scientists working at competing magnet labs in Germany, China, France, and Japan (full story).
A similar story also was published by UPI:
Researchers detail how a distant black hole devoured a star
Two studies appearing in the Aug. 25 issue of the journal Nature provide new insights into a cosmic accident that has been streaming X-rays toward Earth since late March.
NASA's Swift satellite first alerted astronomers to intense and unusual high-energy flares from the new source in the constellation Draco. Swift is operated in collaboration with Penn State, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in N.M. and Orbital Sciences Corp (full story).
A similar story also appeared in HPCwire:
Obama’s R&D plan seeks a renaissance in US manufacturing
President Obama’s program to assist US industries in developing advanced manufacturing technologies would devote as much as $500 million annually to R&D projects at NIST, the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). . . .
Under Obama’s partnership plan, NSF will spend $50 million per year as leader of a four-agency National Robotics Initiative to develop robots that work beside or with humans to perform mundane, dangerous, or precise tasks. NASA, NIH, and the Department of Agriculture will collectively add $20 million to the robotics effort. . . .
Also as part of the initiative, Procter & Gamble will donate high-performance computing software that it developed several years ago in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory. The household-products giant used the fluid dynamics code to improve the manufacturing of diapers and saved itself $500 million in the process, Obama said (full story).
Town saved, no lives lost
LOS ALAMOS, NM (KRQE) - A big party was held in Los Alamos Thursday afternoon to celebrate all those who helped so much during the Las Conchas fire.
The Los Alamos County Council, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Nuclear Security Administration decided they wanted to throw a party basically to say thanks to all those who stepped up and helped protect the lab and the townsite during the fire that began on June 26 and charred nearly 157,000 acres in the Jemez Mountains.
The director of the labs also used this as a chance to give back. He presented a nearly $60,000 check to 11 businesses that provided meals and other goods and services during the fire (full story).
Thank you ceremony held for firefighters
Those who fought Las Conchas Fire were thanked in a big way Thursday (full story).
Miles O’Brien keynote speaker at Bradbury Science Museum
Former CNN anchorman and science correspondent Miles O'Brien lent celebrity status to both the opening of the Bradbury Science Museum's new movie, "Heritage of Science," and the movie itself.
O’Brien severed a correspondent, anchorman and producer for CNN for 17 years and is currently a contributing correspondent for the PBS NewsHour. He first visited Los Alamos in the mid-1990s when he was anchorman for CNN’s “Science and Technology Week." (full story)
Also from the Monitor this week:
Long drought breaks records Los Alamos National Laboratory Meteorologist Scot Johnson said there are two factors driving the drought locally and elsewhere around the country. "La Niña, the cold in the Pacific along the equator driving north and the other situation is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) located in the northern Pacific," Johnson said (full story).
Solar panels with a view
From the US comes news that scientists at the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory have fabricated transparent thin films capable of absorbing light and generating electrical charge over a relatively large area.
One important application of the new material could be when used to develop transparent solar panels or even windows that absorb solar energy to generate electricity (full story).
N.M. tech centers churn out patents
El Rancho crooner [and LANL employee] competes on ABC karaoke series
Will Joe Archuleta be crowned Karaoke King of the South? Tune in Friday night!
That's when ABC will televise the El Rancho [New Mexico] native strutting his stuff as he performs his karaoke version of Tom Jones' 1960s hit "Delilah" on the network's new series, Karaoke Battle USA. . . .
Archuleta, 58, is a facility manager at Los Alamos National Laboratory. His family lineage traces back to Spain, he said. His father, Armando, was a ship welder during World War II and later worked at the lab as a labor foreman. Archuleta's family ran a grocery store and gas station in El Rancho for many years (full story).
