Unraveling the mysteries of the tiniest living things
Understanding the genetic makeup of microbes could benefit applications in medicine, energy, environment and agriculture, LANL image.There are trillions of them – millions fitting through the eye of a needle – and they are everywhere. They live and thrive in vast communities in the environment, such as soil, rivers and oceans, and atmosphere, and in the human body. But they also exist in the oddest of places, such as extreme environments like volcanic hot springs and long-frozen ice in the Arctic.
What’s fascinating about microbiomes is how they contribute to the “big” world. For example, various types of microbiomes thrive in the human body. Those in the human stomach help the gut absorb nutrients and minerals, as well as synthesize vitamins, enzymes and amino acids. (Full Story)
Drought impact study shows new issues for plants and carbon dioxide
Drought is the most widespread factor affecting plant production, Dreamstime image. Extreme drought’s impact on plants will become more dominant under future climate change, as noted in a paper out today in the journal Nature Climate Change. Analysis shows that not only will droughts become more frequent under future climates, but more of those events will be extreme, adding to the reduction of plant production essential to human and animal populations.
“Even though plants can, in many cases, benefit from increased levels of carbon dioxide that are predicted for the future atmosphere, the impact of severe drought on destroying these plants will be extreme, especially in the Amazon, South Africa, Mediterranean, Australia, and southwest USA,” said lead study author Chonggang Xu of Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full Story)
Should Santa deliver by drone?
A promising solution to coordinated vehicle/drone delivery. LANL image. Santa has always run a one-sleigh operation, but a new analysis could help him speed deliveries and save energy, if he ever decided to add a drone to his route.
“People have considered combinations of ground vehicles and drones for deliveries in the past,” said study coauthor Kaarthik Sundar of the Information Systems and Modeling group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, “but they focused on trucks that would move from one point to the next, park while the drones visited various nearby locations, and then wait for the drones to return before moving on. We instead propose solutions for a truck that moves continuously, while a drone flies out and returns to the truck as it proceeds along its route.” (Full Story)
Understanding the mechanism of a viral explosion
Scanning electron micrograph of HIV-1 budding (in green), CDC image.One of the dreaded features of an Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection can be the possible rebound of the virus after undergoing an otherwise successful antiretroviral (ART) regimen. Understanding the viral replication and dramatic growth that sometimes appears subsequent to ART treatment is the subject of a new study by scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (Full Story)
Machine Fault
A rock sample is sandwiched between sensor-equipped steel plates, Penn State photo.
About 5 years ago, Paul Johnson, a geophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, found himself stuck as he was studying how acoustic emissions might be used in earthquake forecasting.
“We were kind of running in circles with the same data sets, and I just didn’t know what to do,” he said. A colleague suggested that Johnson look into applying machine learning “to let the signal tell you what information it contains.”
Johnson began talking to other physicists, materials scientists, computational scientists, and mathematicians about the possibility. (Full Story)
Los Alamos lab makes pledge to tackle gender barriers
Laboratory Director Thom Mason, LANL photo.Los Alamos National Laboratory says it’s committed to breaking down gender barriers and making equality a reality when it comes to nuclear policy. The northern New Mexico lab made the announcement last week, saying it’s the first national laboratory to make an official pledge.
The lab joined the national Gender Champions in Nuclear Policy group, a leadership network that brings together heads of organizations working in nuclear policy. Lab Director Thom Mason says nuclear policy, like many technological fields, has long been a male-dominated space and as a result, woman in the field have too often been marginalized. (Full Story)
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