What If they try to hack Amazon’s drones?

David Mascarenas, right, works with a student on a quad copter.  LANL image.

For now, the threats are being addressed incrementally. Georgia Tech, for example, has been conducting studies into autonomous vision-based navigation, while the Los Alamos National Laboratory wants to make robot movement less predictable.

“The advantage of acting unpredictably is that people who might want to exploit the robot cannot as easily anticipate where the robot might go next,” says Los Alamos National Laboratory research engineer David Mascarenas. (Full Story)

Nontoxic quantum dot research improves solar cells

Hunter McDaniel is developing next-generation quantum dots.  LANL image.

Solar cells made with low-cost, nontoxic copper-based quantum dots can achieve unprecedented longevity and efficiency, according to a study by Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sharp Corp.

“For the first time, we have certified the performance of a quantum dot sensitized solar cell at greater than 5%, which is among the highest reported for any quantum dot solar cell,” said Hunter McDaniel, a Los Alamos postdoctoral researcher and the lead author. (Full Story)

This spooky X-ray ‘hand’ demonstrates a pulsar star mystery

This X-ray nebula appears to look like a human hand. NASA image.

That spooky hand in the image above is producing questions for scientists. While the shape only coincidentally looks like a human hand, scientists are still trying to figure out how a small star produced such a large shape visible in X-rays.

“Scientists are intrigued by what exactly powers these massive explosions, and understanding this would yield important insights about the fundamental forces in nature,” stated Peter Moller, of Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full Story)

LANL begins shipments to Idaho

First MTRU shipment.  LANL photo.

Los Alamos National Laboratory has made the first of its 18 shipments of transuranic (TRU) waste to the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project at Idaho National Laboratory.

“Known as MTRU, or mixed transuranic waste, the material requires special handling because it consists mostly of large, metal equipment with sharp edges. By using equipment and technology available at the Idaho site, this waste can be remotely repackaged safely and efficiently with far fewer hazards for workers.” (Full Story)

Bradbury Science Museum turns 50

“For 50 years, the Bradbury Science Museum’s mission has been to foster enthusiasm and support for science and engineering, and a better understanding of the mission and work of the Laboratory.”

The museum was originally founded in 1954 by Robert Krohn, but was classified a museum when it first opened. In 1963, Robert Porton convinced then Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Director Norris Bradbury to open the unclassified museum. (Full Story)

New associate directors named at LANL

Mary Hockaday and Cheryl Cabbil.   

Los Alamos National Laboratory has announced that Mary Hockaday will be its new AD of the Experimental Physical Sciences Directorate while Cheryl Cabbil will be AD for Nuclear and High Hazard Operations.

“Mary is a 30-year veteran of the Lab and currently serves in a joint role as the deputy associate director for the Weapons Physics and Cheryl brings a distinguished track record for developing and implementing nuclear facility management programs," said Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan. (Full Story)

Also appearing this week in Albuquerque Business First

Lab scientists can be entrepreneurs, too

Steve Yarbro’s eureka moment wasn’t that he figured out how to separate thick, heavy oil.  It was discovering that he could start a company to do that while maintaining his career at Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full Story)


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Dangerous or harmless? New technology could alter airport security rules on liquids

AP Photo.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory has announced what it called a breakthrough for screening liquids at airport security, though it could be years before the technology is potentially installed at a checkpoint near you.

Called MagRay, the system uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and X-rays to quickly analyze whether a bottle’s contents are safe or dangerous. (Full Story)

Watch a machine tell the difference between soda and liquid explosives

Since 2006, to protect against the threat of those explosives, people traveling by air in America have been limited to one quart-sized bag for liquids, each in a container no larger than 3.4 ounces.

A new device being developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory could eventually make the scanning process less painful. Called the MagRay, it's designed to scan liquids and quietly differentiate between the safe and unsafe. And now Los Alamos has released a video showing off the tech. (Full Story)

This story also appeared in the Santa Fe New Mexican, Homeland Security Newswire, and the Los Alamos Monitor. 

Black hole birth captured by cosmic voyeurs

Tom Vestrand and the RAPTOR telescope. LANL photo.       

Intelligent telescopes designed by Los Alamos National Laboratory got a front row seat recently for an unusual birth.

"Los Alamos' RAPTOR telescopes in New Mexico and Hawaii received a very bright cosmic birth announcement for a black hole on April 27," said astrophysicist Tom Vestrand, lead author of a paper appearing today in the journal Science that highlights the unusual event. (Full Story)

Zap! NASA's Curiosity rover fires 100,000th laser shot on Mars

ChemCam zaps another Martian rock. NASA illustration.

NASA's trigger-happy Curiosity rover has fired its 100,000th laser shot on Mars, a science milestone in its mission to determine what rocks on the Red Planet are made of.

Roger Wiens, a planetary scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and principal investigator for ChemCam, said the laser-firing instrument has exceeded expectations. (Full Story)

Martian laser surpasses 100,000 zaps

The 100,000th shot. NASA image.

The ChemCam laser instrument aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover fired its 100,000th shot recently, chronicling its adventures on Mars with a coffee-table-book’s worth of spectral data that might rival snapshots gathered during a long and satisfying family vacation here on Earth. ChemCam zaps rocks with a high-powered laser to determine their composition and carries a camera that can survey the Martian landscape. (Full Story)

New neutrino cooling theory changes understanding of stars’ surface

Neutron star.  LANL image.

Massive X-ray superbursts near the surface of neutron stars are providing a unique window into the operation of fundamental forces of nature under extreme conditions.

“Scientists are intrigued by what exactly powers these massive explosions, and understanding this would yield important insights about the fundamental forces in nature,  especially on the astronomical/cosmological scale,” said Peter Moller of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Theoretical Division. (Full Story)

Obituary: Stirling Colgate

Stirling A. Colgate , Astrophysicist, 88, died Sunday of a long illness. 1n 1975 he went to work at LANL, where he continued to work until his death. He was also a member of the National Academy of Science.

He was born in New York City and attended Los Alamos Ranch School (1939-1942). He was also a member of the Merchant Marine Armed Services 1943-1946. He married Rosie in 1947 and obtained his PhD. from Cornell University in 1951. (Full Story)


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NASA sees 'watershed' cosmic blast in unique detail

NASA Animation.

On April 27, a blast of light from a dying star in a distant galaxy became the focus of astronomers around the world. The explosion, known as a gamma-ray burst and designated GRB 130427A, tops the charts as one of the brightest ever seen.

Telescopes operated by Los Alamos National Laboratory as part of the Rapid Telescopes for Optical Response Project quickly turned to the spot, detecting a flash at magnitude 7 on the astronomical brightness scale. (Full Story)

Black hole birth captured: Biggest, brightest to happen in at least 20 years

Data from the gamma ray burst.

"Los Alamos' RAPTOR telescopes in New Mexico and Hawaii received a very bright cosmic birth announcement for a black hole on April 27," said astrophysicist Tom Vestrand.

"This was the burst of the century," said Los Alamos co-author James Wren. "It's the biggest, brightest one to happen in at least 20 years, and maybe even longer than that." (Full Story)

This story also appeared in Air & Cosmos

10 Inventions to change the world

#1 Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System — In the old TV show “The Six Million Dollar Man,” astronaut Steve Austin was given bionic body parts, he gets a an arm, two legs and a left eye with a zoom lens and night-vision.

The Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System isn’t quite that advanced. But for the vision-impaired, the “bionic retina” is a huge leap forward. (Full Story)

Researchers investigate spread and evolution of HIV virus

HIV.    

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory are investigating the complex relationships between the spread of the HIV virus in a population and the actual, rapid evolution of the virus within each patient’s body.

“We have developed novel ways of estimating epidemics dynamics such as who infected whom, and the true population incidence of infection versus mere diagnoses dates,” said Thomas Leitner, principal investigator. (Full Story)

LANL reveals historic JFK artifacts

While the nation remembers the man whose presidency was cut short, we look back at  just a year before his death when he became the first president to visit the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Lab workers went through their archives to find special artifacts from that historic presidential visit, some things they were even seeing for the first time. Nearly 6,000 people gathered in Los Alamos when President John F. Kennedy visited Dec. 7, 1962. (Full Story)

JFK: The tragedy still resonates

JFK’s motorcade passes by the Los Alamos post office.  LANL image.

Kennedy made several visits to New Mexico during the campaign and his presidency, including a whirlwind tour on Dec. 7, 1962, of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia Laboratory.

In Los Alamos – where he was the first president to visit the laboratory where the atomic bomb was born – Kennedy got a classified briefing on Project Rover, a program to develop nuclear rocket engines for space travel, and met with lab officials and Rover scientists. (Full Story)

SC13: Elevation plays a role in memory error rates

The Cielo supercomputer had more errors than Jaguar, Probably due to the difference in elevation. LANL image.

With memory, as with real estate, location matters. A group of researchers from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory have found that the altitude at which SRAM (static random access memory) resides can influence how many random errors the memory produces. (Full Story)

From Tesla’s lab to Los Alamos: Powerful magnets come full circle

LANL celebrates the 100 Tesla record.  YouTube Video.

In March 2012, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory set a world record by achieving a 100.75 tesla magnetic pulse, about 2,000,000 times more powerful than the Earth’s magnetic field.

The Pulsed Field Facility at Los Alamos National Lab includes the capacitor banks, generators and technical systems necessary to support an array of powerful magnets. One of those is the 100 tesla multi-shot magnet, which produces the most powerful non-destructive magnetic field in the world. (Full Story)

LANL community leaders’ breakfast draws crowd

Alan Bishop, LANL Principal Associate Director for Science, Technology, and Engineering, told the group that 63.2 percent of LANL purchasing is done in New Mexico and 46.1 percent of that amount in spent in northern New Mexico.

This year, LANL will contribute $3 million to education, economic development and charity in New Mexico, Bishop said. (Full Story)


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Best of What’s New – Grand Award: MiniMax

The MiniMAX is the world’s smallest, most portable x-ray machine. Unlike its predecessors, which are a couple of feet wide and quite heavy, MiniMAX weighs five pounds.

It can be whisked to accidents, crime scenes, battlefields, airports, sidelines, and any other place that could benefit from on-the-spot x-ray vision. Inside, an x-ray source about the size of a can of soda generates a beam as powerful as stationary machines, and rather than rely on a bulky transformer, it draws power from a 9-volt battery. (Full story)

Innovation of the Year: Second Sight Argus II

 As part of the multi-­institutional Artificial Retina Project, Los Alamos researchers helped develop the first bionic eye, recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The Argus II does something once thought impossible—it gives sight to the blind. The device is the first FDA-approved artificial retina. It consists of a miniature video camera mounted on a pair of glasses that sends footage to a microprocessor worn on a person’s belt. The processor converts the visual data to electronic signals, which are transmitted wirelessly to a 60-pixel electrode array implanted in the back of the eye. (Full story)


Here's an Albuquerque Business First story about the PopSci selections: Click

The 25 Best Inventions of the Year 2013

The FDA has approved the first device that can restore partial ­vision to those who have severe retinitis pigmentosa, which can lead to blindness. The Argus II consists of an implanted artificial retina and a pair of glasses attached to a video unit that enables the patient to see outlines of images and the contrast between light and dark. (Full Story)

 

IST professor aims to educate citizen scientists through beauty of auroras

 “Real-time Auroral Imaging on the ISS,” an idea conceived by Elizabeth McDonald of the New Mexico Consortium in collaboration with Tapia and Michelle Hall of Science Education Solutions, was recently named the grand prize winner in the crowdsourcing contest What Would You Send to the ISS? sponsored by the Center for Advancement of Science in Space.

MacDonald is a New Mexico Consortium affiliate research scientist and a Los Alamos National Laboratory staff scientist who studies space weather. (Full story)

Partnering for Progress: New council aims to boost research, economic development
 
LANL Director Charlie McMillan (left) and U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich
U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich joined leaders from the state’s research universities, national laboratories and military installations on Friday to help kick off an effort aimed at fostering scientific innovation and boosting economic opportunity in New Mexico. (Full story)

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