Tissue-engineered artificial lung

The PuLMo alveolar unit is readied for

testing, LANL image.

Nicknamed "PuLMo" for Pulmonary Lung Model, the device consists of two major parts, the bronchiolar unit and the alveolar unit—just like the human lung. The units are primarily made from various polymers and are connected by a microfluidic "circuit board" that manages fluid and air flow.

"When we build our lung, we not only take into account the aspects of different cell types, the tissues that are involved, we also take into account that a lung is supposed to breathe, so PuLMo actually breathes," said Pulak Nath of Applied Modern Physics, who leads engineering efforts for the project. (Full story)

Watch the video

 

Unique water telescope detects Black Hole flicker

Gamma ray source TeV J1930+188 is far

more complicated than originally thought.

HAWC data.

“This is our deepest look at two-thirds of the sky, as well as the highest energy photons we’ve ever seen from any source,” Brenda Dingus of Los Alamos National Laboratory, who presented the map at the American Physical Society. “We’re at the high energy frontier.”

HAWC is not your typical telescope. The detector is made up of 300 water tanks, each filled with 200,000 liters of purified water. When high-energy particles pass through the water, they emit a blue light called Cherenkov radiation, and physicists then use that light to reconstruct where the particles originated. (Full story)

How ‘killer electrons’ in space can wreak havoc on Earth

Twin Van Allen Probes in orbit. NASA image.

A group of scientists from academia and government met in Santa Fe, New Mexico, earlier this month to compare notes and move the field of space weather research to the next level. The SHIELDS workshop, under the patronage of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, covered multiple disciplines including plasma physics, computational science, and engineering. (Full story)

  

Los Alamos students take first place in Supercomputing Challenge

Right to left, Ming Lo, Phillip Ionkov, Andy

Corliss and his brother Max Corliss, LANL photo.

Andy Corliss of Aspen Elementary, Max Corliss of Los Alamos Middle, Phillip Ionkov of Aspen Elementary, and Ming Lo of Aspen Elementary won first place for their project, “Solving the Rubic’s Cube 2.0,” on Tuesday at the 26th New Mexico Supercomputing Challenge at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The Supercomputing Challenge is sponsored by Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Security, LLC, the State of New Mexico, and generous industry partners across the country. (Full story)

 

Education standouts

Arasely Rodriguez (right) of Taos High School, Solomon Sindelar of the New Mexico Military Institute and Katherine Wang (left) of Los Alamos High School are recipients of the 2016 Los Alamos Employees’ Scholarship Fund Gold scholarships. They are among the 95 students from seven Northern New Mexico counties receiving scholarships, which are funded through pledges from Los Alamos National Laboratory employees and a $250,000 matching amount from Los Alamos National Security, LLC. (Full story)

 

LANL projects rosy job numbers

Director McMillan, LANL photo.

Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan assured local leaders in Santa Fe Tuesday that the lab is going to continue to be a strong community and regional partner. LANL plans to hire more than 2,000 people over the next four years, McMillan said.

He said the laboratory will be taking advantage of the retirement wave “to shape the future workforce of the lab,” he said, adding that they’ve already begun the recruitment process through social media, resume workshops and job fairs across the region. (Full story)

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Water telescope’s first sky map shows flickering black holes

The HAWC observatory near the Sierra Nevada volcano in Mexico, from New Scientist.

“This is our deepest look at two-thirds of the sky, as well as the highest energy photons we’ve ever seen from any source,” says Brenda Dingus of Los Alamos National Laboratory, who presented the map at the American Physical Society meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah on 18 April. “We’re at the high energy frontier.”

HAWC has been operating from the top of a mountain in central Mexico for about a year, and has caught some of the highest-energy photons ever observed. It is sensitive to gamma rays between 0.1 and 100 teraelectronvolts (TeV) in energy – more than 7 times higher energy than the particles produced in the Large Hadron Collider. (Full Story)

Also in Science News

Numerical simulations shed new light on early universe

BURST predicts light nuclei synthesized in the Big Bang. LANL image.

Anticipating precision cosmological data from the next generation of "Extremely Large" telescopes, the BURST code developed by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in collaboration with colleagues at University of California San Diego, "promises to open up new avenues for investigating existing puzzles of cosmology," says Los Alamos physicist Mark Paris of the Nuclear and Particle, Astrophysics and Cosmology group. "These include the nature and origin of visible matter and the properties of the more mysterious 'dark matter' and 'dark radiation.' " (Full Story)

Also in the Daily Galaxy

Forest die-offs predicted in U.S. Southwest

McDowell at the tree survival/mortality (SUMO) research facility, LANL photo.

New research predicts that nearly all coniferous forests in the American Southwest could be lost to climate change by the end of the century.

Dr. Nathan McDowell, who led the Los Alamos National Laboratory study, says the projected mass die-off of trees like junipers and piñon pines will be widespread within the next thirty-four years.

McDowell: “The key take away from a study like this is that while the exact numbers are tenuous, the general trajectories they project are pretty robust. All of the different research is pointing in the same direction, which is that we’re going to lose forests around the world.” (Full Story)

The space weather threat ... and how we protect ourselves

Solar eruption, NASA image.

Many people think of space as a silent, empty void and the Sun as only a distant source of light and heat. Not true. The Sun and the Earth are connected in more complex, intimate, and sometimes dangerous ways.

The Sun continually ejects high-energy electrons, protons, and other nuclei that bombard the Earth, producing space-weather effects such as the beautiful northern lights but also others that can destroy satellites and disrupt our lives here on Earth. (Full Story)

One step closer to printable perovskite solar cells?

Perovskite solar cell, LANL image.

Perovskites are the latest buzzword in solar power. Named after a Russian mineralogist called Lev Perovski, their crystal structure – similar to that of CaTiO3 – along with their optical and electrical properties, have seen them touted for use in a number of optoelectronic applications.

To investigate the effect of the process on perovskite crystal growth, the Los Alamos team varied substrate temperature, solution volume and blade speed. They found that the size of the perovskite ‘islands’ that formed in the film was strongly correlated to the temperature of the substrate. (Full Story)

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Science on the Hill: Why space weather matters

Van Allen belts yield surprises, NASA image.

Many people think of space as a silent, empty void and the sun as a distant source of light and heat. Not true. The sun and the Earth are connected in complex, intimate and sometimes dangerous ways.

Recent research by Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA, the New Mexico Consortium and others, however, has painted a new picture of the Van Allen belts with important implications for everyday life and national security. (Full story)

Also from the New Mexican this week:

Parched land worries fire forecasters

2013 wildfire in the Jemez Mountains, New

Mexican photo.

Climate change is also causing longer fire seasons for an obvious reason: Fires burn better in warmer, drier weather, said Nate McDowell, a Los Alamos National Laboratory tree physiologist.

“To some extent, it’s that simple,” he said. There are always exceptions, he said, “but the trend is warmer, warmer, warmer and, therefore, [wildfires last] longer." (Full story)

 

The antibacterial resistance threat

Mukundan, LANL photo.

“We need to be very careful in using antimicrobial agents for everything from hand washing to toothpaste,” Harshini Mukundan, microbiologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, explains. “Increased selection of drug resistant organisms means that future generations will be helpless in fighting even the most common bacterial infections.”

Mukundan and her colleagues have been working on biosurveillance and tracking the emergence of drug resistant strains in high disease burden populations where emerging antibiotic resistance is a huge concern. (Full story)

Space scientist tapped for French knighthood

Roger Wiens, right, and Christophe Lemoine,

Consul General of France.  From the Daily Post.

Los Alamos space scientist Roger Wiens was awarded the honorary title of chevalier (knight) in France’s Academic Order of Palms for his work in forging strong ties between the French and American scientific communities.

Wiens is the principal investigator of the ChemCam, a laser spectroscopy instrument on NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover that was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in collaboration with numerous French scientists. (Full story) 

 

LANL powers Trinity and MarFS with Scality RING storage 

Trinity supercomputer, LANL image.

Scality, the storage that powers digital business, today announced the production deployment of the Scality RING to power Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) Trinity supercomputer, projected to be one of the world’s fastest. Trinity, part of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Program, is expected to be the first platform large and fast enough to begin to accommodate finely resolved 3D calculations for mission-critical simulations. (Full story)

 

AlgaStar/BioStim and Los Alamos National Laboratory renew research

Biostim test setup at LANL. From

the Post.

The objective of the NMSBA project, which allows local small businesses to work with scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is to map the conditions under which biostimulation enhances the growth rate and metabolism for several biological cultures involving algae and bacteria by means of microwave energy for use in the future development of nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, food and alternative fuels production. (Full story)

 

Unexpected Security Holes

Raymond Newell, LANL photo.

Los Alamos National Laboratories, for example, has developed an optical module that it is licensing to private industry to reduce those fluctuations. “With this kind of approach you need physical access to a device, and there is no reasonable way to do that,” said Raymond Newell, R&D scientist in the Physics Division of Los Alamos. (Full story)

 

So how exactly do we get to Alpha Centauri?

 Sailing on laser power, UCSB illustration.          

Two physicists formerly of Fermilab and Los Alamos National Laboratory are planning a Kickstarter to build a prototype antimatter drive. However, all current methods of manufacturing antimatter only produce infinitesimal amounts of it — it could cost $100 billion or more to produce a gram of the stuff.Even if humanity could generate enough antimatter for interstellar travel, it remains unknown whether one could store and manipulate it safely. (Full story)

 

95 New Mexico students receive LAESF scholarships

From left, 2016 LAESF gold-level $20,000 scholarship

recipients Katherine Wang, Solomon Sindelar and

Arasely Rodriguez, LANL photo.

Katherine Wang of Los Alamos High School, Arasely Rodriguez of Taos High School and Solomon Sindelar of New Mexico Military Institute are recipients of the 2016 Los Alamos Employees’ Scholarship Fund Gold scholarships. They are among the 95 students from seven Northern New Mexico counties receiving LAESF scholarships, which are funded through pledges from Los Alamos National Laboratory employees and a $250,000 matching amount from Los Alamos National Security, LLC. (Full story)

  

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Looking inside plutonium

Plutonium alpha phase metal samples are mirror finished 6mmx6mm squares, LANL image.

Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories have recently conducted plutonium experiments using Sandia's pulsed power Z Machine that have reached regions of pressure, temperature and density in plutonium never before explored in the laboratory.

"With Z we have very carefully reached pressure, temperature and density regimes that are relevant to those seen during a nuclear weapon detonation," said Russell Olson, a Dynamic Material Properties project leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full Story)
 
Also in the Los Alamos Daily Post

Removing intercalated water from nitrogen-doped graphene-oxide sheets

Steps one and two of the four step process developed to make NrGO catalysts. From PhysOrg.

Fuel cells require a catalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction. One type of catalyst is nitrogen-doped graphene-oxide nanosheets.

The process of making graphene-oxide nanosheets is done in an aqueous media and results in water molecules residing between the graphene sheets. Several researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of New Mexico, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Rutgers University have characterized the effects of removing these intercalated water molecules. (Full Story)

Los Alamos - U.S. Navy: Partners since World War II

“Deak” Parsons, head of Ordnance Division in 1943. From National Security Science.

The Navy-Los Alamos partnership was forged during the dark days of history’s most deadly conflict. Today, the partnership continues. For example, every year, midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy vie for summer internships at the Laboratory (through the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Service Academies Research Associates program).

The Laboratory continues to ensure the safety and reliability of every naval nuclear weapon, while the Navy reminds adversaries that acts of aggression against the United States or her allies will be met, just as they were in 1941, in a swift and decisive manner. (Full Story)

Also from the Daily Post this week

Science in 60 Seconds: Training explosives experts

Military Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technicians have a tough job. Their lives—and others’ lives too—depend on their knowledge of explosive materials and the correct procedures for identifying and dismantling homemade explosives.

During the Advanced Homemade Explosives training course at Los Alamos National Laboratory, lab scientists use their expertise to teach EOD techs from the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy how to recognize homemade explosives labs and the raw ingredients commonly used to make IEDs and other bombs. (Full Story)

Watch Science in 60

HPC storage and IO trends and workflows

In this video from the 2016 OpenFabrics Workshop, Gary Grider from Los Alamos National Laboratory presents: HPC Storage and IO Trends and Workflows.

“Trends in computer memory/storage technology are in flux perhaps more so now than in the last two decades. Economic analysis of HPC storage hierarchies has led to new tiers of storage being added to the next fleet of supercomputers including Burst Buffers or In-System Solid State Storage and Campaign Storage. (Full Story)

Nanotubes line up to form films

Nanotube films, from Rice University.

A simple filtration process helped Rice University researchers create flexible, wafer-scale films of highly aligned and closely packed carbon nanotubes.

Scientists at Rice, with support from Los Alamos National Laboratory, have made inch-wide films of densely packed, chirality-enriched single-walled carbon nanotubes through a process revealed today in Nature Nanotechnology. (Full Story)

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