Promising future of quantum dots explored in conference
Quantum dots under ultraviolet light, LANL image."This research, which started two decades ago with a handful of fragments of semiconductor-doped colored glasses, has evolved into a wide-ranging program spanning different areas of quantum dot science from synthesis and spectroscopy to theory and devices," said Victor Klimov, the NanoTech team's leader and the founder of the Laboratory's quantum dot program. Klimov gave a special introductory address at the conference with his personal perspective on the field's evolution. (Full Story)
Watch the video on YouTube
New NNSA supercomputers highlight evolving HPC demands
The entire fleet of supercomputers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), across both classified and unclassified divisions, totals between two and three petaflops, according to the center’s head of high performance computing, Gary Grider. But of course, this will change significantly when the massive Trinity machine comes online at Los Alamos in 2016, which will bring the lab’s capacity to between forty and sixty petaflops. (Full Story)
Decision Sciences completes testing of cargo scanning system
The Freeport container facility, from FCP.Decision Sciences International Corporation, today announced it has recently completed the final phase of the five phase system characterization of its Multi-Mode Passive Detection System (MMPDS) located at the Freeport Container Port (FCP) in the Bahamas.
Based on technology originally invented at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the commercially available Multi-Mode Passive Detection System (MMPDS) was then developed with considerable private sector investment. (Full Story)
Gamma-Ray method used to flag nuclear stashes
A typical American port, from U.S. Customs Service.Although the nuclear reaction that produces these γ-rays was demonstrated as early as the 1950s, for decades, no one had tested it for use in nuclear inspection, says Richard Sheffield, a physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico who was not involved in the latest work. Sheffield calculates that the method could decrease the radiation needed to detect nuclear materials by more than ten times, and calls the work “a significant advance." (Full Story)
Also in Scientific American
Mining Wikipedia for health data
Sara Del Valle, LANL photo.A paper by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the universities of Utah and Iowa suggests that data from Wikipedia can be vacuumed to track both infections and public health responses.
The use of internet media to track the wavefronts of fast-moving infections such as the flu is a successful strategy. About a decade ago, it was noticed that search engine queries concerning a disease accurately followed its progress on the ground much faster and more accurately than data reported by the public health system. (Full Story)
Supercomputing impacts deep water oil safety
Drilling rig model, LANL image.Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory used advanced simulation software to help improve the safety of ultra-deep floating oil rigs by studying how the surrounding currents affect the motion of the platform. As highlighted in a recent article, the project responsible for carrying out these computational fluid dynamics (CFD) numerical simulations was recognized as an ANSYS Hall of Fame finalist. (Full Story)
Also from HPCwire this week:
Supercomputing Challenge draws more than 200 students to LANL
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