There’s a fungus among us – Valley fever

Valley Fever fungus, Coccidioidomycosis. CDC image.

As if bark beetles and low river water levels weren’t enough, there’s another local impact of drought in New Mexico that we can think about – Valley fever. It’s a dust-borne fungal infection, common in the San Joaquin Valley of California and parts of Arizona, but more and more likely to move north through New Mexico, affecting large population centers, such as Albuquerque and Santa Fe, as heat and drought make our soils more welcoming to the fungus.

A 2019 study by a Los Alamos scientist and researchers at the University of California, Irvine documented this expansion, projecting that the fungal infection’s range will likely more than double in the United States, with the list of affected states jumping from 12 to 17, and the number of individual Valley fever cases predicted to grow by 50% by the year 2100. (Full story)

The next coronavirus nightmare is closer than you think

Coronavirus illustration.

Global warming can accelerate displacement by thawing, burning, flooding, or drying out habitats in response to hotter temperatures and stronger storms. “As habitats change and people move and wildlife moves, they’re going to be coming into contact more with each other,” said Jeanne Fair, a biosecurity and public health expert at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Increasingly close contact, in turn, significantly raises the risk that an animal disease will spill over into humans. (Full story)

Acetone plus light creates a green jet fuel additive

Scientists at Los Alamos are converting

a simple molecule into a jet fuel additive.

LANL photo.

Take biomass-derived acetone -- common nail polish remover -- use light to upgrade it to higher-mass hydrocarbons, and, voila, you have a domestically generated product that can be blended with conventional jet fuel to fly while providing environmental benefits, creating domestic jobs, securing the nation's global leadership in bioenergy technologies, and improving U.S. energy security.

"This process allows us to transform a natural product into a fuel additive, improving the performance of petroleum-based jet fuel," said Courtney Ford Ryan, a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author of a paper out in preprint form in the journal Sustainable Energy and Fuels. (Full story)

Also from Inverse:

https://www.inverse.com/innovation/scientists-are-turning-nail-polish-remover-into-jet-fuel

Life in the balance

 

Harshini Mukundan, LANL photo.

Harshini Mukundan, PhD, juggles a dizzying number of responsibilities – while somehow making it all look effortless.

As an administrator in the Chemistry Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, she serves as Deputy Group Leader for Physical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy and Team Leader in Chemistry for Biomedical Applications. The 2003 graduate from UNM's Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program is also a teacher, as well as a devoted parent and spouse, who, in her spare time, participates in traditional Indian dance. (Full story)

15 organizations join Los Alamos’ Efficient Mission Centric Computing Consortium in first year

Just over a year after Los Alamos National Laboratory launched the Efficient Mission Centric Computing Consortium (EMC3), 15 companies, universities and federal organizations are now working together to explore new ways to make extreme-scale computers more efficient.

“In the first year of EMC3 we have already seen efficiency improvements to HPC in a number of areas, including the world’s first NVMe-based hardware-accelerated compressed parallel filesystem, in-situ analysis enabled on network adapters for a real simulation code, identifying issues with file system metadata performance in the Linux Kernel, record-setting in situ simulation output indexing, demonstrating file-system metadata indexing, and more,” said Gary Grider, High Performance Computing division leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full story)

And more on EMC3 from InsideHPC

Also from HPCwire this week:

Los Alamos high-performance computing veteran to chair SC22

Candace Culhane, LANL photo.

Candace Culhane, a program/project director in Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Directorate for Simulation and Computation, has been selected as the general chair for the 2022 SC Conference (SC22).

“We are thrilled to announce that Candy Culhane is the SC22 General Chair. She brings to the conference her deep knowledge and practical experience in working with the high-performance computing industry sector, national laboratories, and supercomputer centers,” said Michela Taufer, the Jack Dongarra Professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville and SC Steering Committee chair. (Full story)

Carbon Capture: Solved by Software?

SimCCS software shows potential carbon sources (red dots), sinks (blue dots), and proposed optimal pipelines (green). LANL image.

Most scenarios for a clean-energy future rely on carbon capture—taking CO2 emissions from their sources, such as power plants, then sequestering them underground or converting the carbon into a usable product. For example, at the National Carbon Capture Center in Alabama, where the DOE has tested the technology since 2009, equipment on the coal power plant’s smokestacks separates the carbon from other emissions. The byproduct is then transported in the form of liquid to a storage sink.

SimCCS is a software program developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory to solve the problem of high transportation costs between emitter and sink. The open-source software, which is also being developed and expanded on by universities across the country, finds the most efficient route between a carbon-emitting plant and a sink. (Full Story)

Where Australia's smoke goes to die

Satellite image of a smoke plume in Australia. From Mashable.

Smoke from Australia's megafires has already traveled tens of thousands of miles around Earth. "It circles the globe in roughly a week," said Manvendra Dubey, who researches air pollution and wildfire smoke at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Much of this carbon dioxide will likely stay in the atmosphere, where it will live for hundreds of years. Though, plants on land and plankton in the ocean will consume some of this carbon dioxide — though exactly how much is unknown. "It will have climatic consequences," said Dubey. (Full Story)

New high-energy gamma-ray sources found in the galaxy

New sources of high-energy gamma rays, HAWC image.

Most of the gamma rays scientists have observed in the past have been lower-energy gamma rays. But with the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Gamma-Ray Observatory (HAWC) in Mexico, which was completed a few years ago, physicists are now able to survey the entire sky for gamma rays with especially high energies.

These are actually the highest-energy gamma rays ever seen,” said Brenda Dingus, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a senior member of the HAWC collaboration.

The new high-energy gamma-ray sources are all located near pulsars — this makes the researchers wonder whether the high-energy gamma rays are a common feature of pulsars, says Kelly Malone, an LANL physicist and lead author of the new paper. (Full Story)

Scientists converting acetone derived from plants into green jet fuel additive

Scientists at Los Alamos are converting a simple molecule into jet fuel using a novel process that uses light. LANL photo.

Take biomass-derived acetone—common nail polish remover—use light to upgrade it to higher-mass hydrocarbons, and, voila, you have a domestically generated product that can be blended with conventional jet fuel to fly while providing environmental benefits, creating domestic jobs, securing the nation’s global leadership in bioenergy technologies, and improving U.S. energy security.

“This process allows us to transform a natural product into a fuel additive, improving the performance of petroleum-based jet fuel,” said Courtney Ford Ryan, a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author of a paper out in preprint form in the journal Sustainable Energy and Fuels. (Full Story)

Scientists image heart RNA structure for the first time

An RNA molecule that has a role in transforming stem cells into heart cells.  LANL image.

Scientists at Los Alamos and international partners have created the first 3-D images of a special type of RNA molecule that is critical for stem cell programming and known as the “dark matter” of the genome.

“As far as we know,” said corresponding author Karissa Sanbonmatsu, Ph.D., “this is the first full 3-D structural study of any long, non-coding RNA (lncRNA) other than a partial structure.” Sanbonmatsu is a structural biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “A better understanding of these RNAs could lead to new strategies in regenerative medicine for people with heart conditions due to cardiovascular disease or aging.” (Full Story)

Los Alamos National Laboratory spent $396 million with New Mexico business in 2019

New numbers for fiscal year 2019 show Los Alamos National Laboratory’s big impact on New Mexico’s economy, as the Laboratory employed 12,041 people for a total of $1.16 billion in salaries and contracted with small businesses statewide for $288.6 million.

“Los Alamos National Laboratory is a major economic driver in the region, and we are fully committed to strengthening local companies and growing the local workforce,” said Thom Mason, director. “I look forward to building on these efforts in the coming year.” (Full Story)

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Researchers find new high-energy gamma-ray sources in the galaxy

High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Gamma-Ray Observatory, HAWC photo.
 
“These are actually the highest-energy gamma rays ever seen,” said Brenda Dingus, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a senior member of the HAWC collaboration. Some of these gamma rays have about 10 times the energy of the most energetic gamma rays that have been created in particle accelerators on Earth.

Interestingly, the new high-energy gamma-ray sources are all located near pulsars — extremely magnetic rotating neutron stars that shoot jets of radiation through space. This makes the researchers wonder whether the high-energy gamma rays — and the cosmic rays that produced them — are a common feature of pulsars, says Kelly Malone, an LANL physicist and lead author of the new paper. (Full Story)

Also from Mirage News

Watch the video

Why the Taal volcano's eruption created so much lightning

Thunder clapped and lightning streaked through the dark column of volcanic ash. From Mashable.

Volcanic lightning, however captivating, is common, explained Sonja Behnke, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who researches these volcanic phenomena and has repeatedly observed volcanic lightning in places like Iceland and Japan.

First, the volcanic ash needs an electric charge. When a volcano erupts explosively it ejects exploded particles of molten rock into the air, which becomes volcanic ash. In the towering plume of ash, these billions of particles start colliding and rubbing against each other, which creates charged volcanic particles. It's similar to how you create static electricity by rubbing socks on carpet. "The ash gets charged as the volcano is erupting," said Behnke. (Full Story)

Why premature claims of life on Mars hurt science

The seemingly artificial "Face" on Mars turned out to be just an eroded mesa on closer inspection, image from SciAm

Most scientists aren’t surprised when some people come up with a sci-fi explanation for an image from another planet. After all, humans evolved to find recognizable patterns amid chaos. There’s even a word for it: pareidolia. But what we don’t expect is for fellow scientists—those who have been trained in the scientific method—to make those claims. When they do, it hurts science as a whole. (Full Story)

New Mexico faces worst flu season in a decade

Experts at Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) say this is the worst flu New Mexico has seen in a decade. The most recent report from the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) shows the flu is hitting hard all across the state.

"We're just seeing elevated flu activities kind of everywhere," said Dave Osthus, who created last year's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) flu forecast model. "And the main reason for that is influenza A and influenza B, two different strands of influenza, are sort of ramping up at the same time." (Full Story)

Colloidal quantum dot laser diodes are just around the corner

Colloidal quantum dots operating in LED mode. LANL image.

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have incorporated meticulously engineered colloidal quantum dots into a new type of LED containing an integrated optical resonator, which allows the LEDs to function as lasers.

The researchers demonstrated an operational LED that also functioned as an optically pumped, low-threshold laser. To achieve those goals, they incorporated an optical resonator directly into the LED architecture without obstructing the charge-carrier flows into the quantum dot emitting layer. (Full Story)

Biologists in search of a powerful combination of cancer-fighting drugs

Zebrafish with the human form of mutated BRAF are used to test melanoma treatment. ACS photo.

Critical to the NAU-based pilot project team is Richard Posner, a professor in NAU’s Department of Biological Sciences, and William Hlavacek, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Posner and Hlavacek are computational systems biologists who have developed mathematical models for predicting optimal strategies to target mutations in BRAF. In recent work, they and their collaborators predicted that two-drug combinations will be able to effectively suppress mutant BRAF (V600E) signaling. These predictions were validated in melanoma cell lines. (Full Story)

Northern offering classes for LANL workers

Northern New Mexico College is now offering continuing education courses in mathematics for technicians and basic blueprint reading to current employees of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The program is aimed at those working in LANL’s Detonator Production Division, in order to enhance their skill sets.

The continuing education courses to be conducted at LANL are being provided by the college under a $458,000 contract with LANL. Northern is to deliver 360 hours of instruction to at least 50 technicians over the next two years, according to a news release. (Full Story)

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Scientists image heart RNA structure for the first time

Center section of the RNA molecule known as "Braveheart," LANL image.

Scientists at Los Alamos and international partners have created the first 3-D images of a special type of RNA molecule that is critical for stem cell programming and known as the “dark matter” of the genome.

“As far as we know,” said corresponding author Karissa Sanbonmatsu, “this is the first full 3-D structural study of any long, non-coding RNA (lncRNA) other than a partial structure.” Sanbonmatsu is a structural biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “A better understanding of these RNAs could lead to new strategies in regenerative medicine for people with heart conditions due to cardiovascular disease or aging.” (Full Story)

UNM alumna part of research team for Mars rover project

Nina Lanza, LANL photo.

One University of New Mexico graduate is reaching some out-of-this-world achievements. Nina Lanza is a planetary scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and is a member of a team working on the new Mars rover.

“I applied to UNM, and as soon as I was accepted, I stopped waiting to hear from other grad schools and accepted immediately. I knew this was where I wanted to go. I worked very closely with Los Alamos during my graduate work at UNM on the ChemCam project, so UNM perfectly prepared me for a job at Los Alamos, where I still work today,” Lanza said. (Full Story)

AR simulates IED dismantling

Illustration of an IED scenario, from iHLS.

Roadside improvised explosive device (IED) is typically made by civilians using conventional materials and commercially available chemicals. Such improvised explosive devices can be used by criminals, vandals, terrorists, suicide bombers etc.

A team from Los Alamos National Lab led by David Mascareñas has developed a software suite that can be used to train first responders in locating, identifying, and rendering IEDs safe under a variety of scenarios. (Full Story)

How would ELROI let us know which satellites are which?

Cubesat, LANL photo.

An interesting solution to [the problem of manmade objects in orbit] being developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory is ELROI – the Extremely Low Resource Optical Identifier. We spoke with David Palmer, a scientist at the lab who is developing ELROI, to learn more about this technology.

ELROI (which stands for Extremely Low Resource Optical Identifier) is our solution. This is a little flashing light that can be built into a solar-powered package the size of a Scrabble tile. The flashing light can be seen with a small telescope on the ground and its blinks encode a “license plate number” that tells you exactly which satellite it is. (Full Story)

What do rocks and explosives have in common?

Like rocks, high explosives have curious acoustic behavior, LANL images.

The definitive way to test an aging detonator in the U.S. nuclear stockpile is to fire it. But this destroys the detonator, and it doesn’t reveal much about what impact time has on the high explosives inside.

“Getting information on the high explosive inside those detonators is either really difficult or not possible,” says explosives chemist Peter Schulze. Even so, answering this question—will an aged detonator still work as intended?—is vital to the Los alamos National Laboratory’s mission. (Full Story)

Delta, Anthem, and Los Alamos Lab join the IBM Quantum Computing Network

IBM Quantum Computer, IBM photo.

Delta Airlines, Anthem, Georgia Tech, the Los Alamos National Lab, and other new network members will join the largest commercial quantum computing program available, which includes Fortune 500 companies, startups, universities, and research labs.

IBM announced the news at CES 2020. The IBM Q Network now has almost 100 organizations working with IBM to advance the technology and explore practical applications. (Full Story)

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U.S. tests ways to sweep space clean of radiation after nuclear attack

The U.S. military thought it had cleared the decks when, on 9 July 1962, it heaved a 1.4-megaton nuclear bomb some 400 kilometers into space: Orbiting satellites were safely out of range of the blast. But in the months that followed the test, called Starfish Prime, satellites began to wink out one by one, including the world’s first communications satellite, Telstar. There was an unexpected aftereffect: High-energy electrons, shed by radioactive debris and trapped by Earth’s magnetic field, were fritzing out the satellites’ electronics and solar panels.

Scientists got a glimpse of a potential solution from NASA’s Van Allen Probes, which launched in 2012 and ducked in and out of Earth’s radiation belts until the mission ended last summer. It offered a deep dive into natural remediation processes, showing how radio waves resonate with high-energy electrons, scattering them down the magnetic field lines and sweeping them out of the belts. “Compared to 10 years ago, we just know so much more about how these wave-particle interactions work,” says Geoff Reeves, a space physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full story)

The 20 Coolest Machines of the 2010s

The Plasma Liner Experiment at LANL.

At Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, a new type of fusion reactor is underway. The Plasma Liner Experiment, as it's being called, will draw on two different confinement methods to enable the prototype: magnetic and inertial confinement. Cooler still, it has 36 plasma guns, surrounding the spherical chamber, that shoot jets of ionized gas into the chamber, itself. That targets, compresses and heats a cloud of fusion fuel inside. The reactor should be finalized sometime this year. (Full story)

Scientists model dynamic feedback loop that fuels the spread of wildfires

Flames spread up a hillside near firefighters at the

Blue Cut Fire on August 18, 2016 near Wrightwood,

California. Courtesy photo.

From a physics and chemistry standpoint, fire is an incredibly complicated phenomenon—so much so that 19th century physicist Michael Faraday built an entire series of six lectures around the flame of a single candle at the Royal Institution in 1848. Fuel, heat, and oxygen, combined under the right conditions, ignite into a sustained chemical reaction: fire. Add in factors like conduction, convection, radiation, and any number of environmental factors, and that fire can rapidly spread out of control.

Scientists have been trying to better delineate how wildfires spread for decades, and understanding the complicated fluid dynamics at work is key to those efforts. Rodman Linn, an atmospheric scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, does computational modeling of how fires interact with the surrounding atmosphere to predict how a given fire behaves. It's a challenging phenomenon to model, since it involves the interaction of several different processes. Linn describes the various factors that influence how a wildfire spreads in an article in the November issue of Physics Today. (Full story)

1 big thing: The return of analog?

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios.         

Returning to a technology largely discarded since the 1960s, scientists are betting on analog computing to wean AI systems off the monstrous amounts of electricity they currently require.

Why it matters: AI is on track to use up a tenth of the world's electricity by 2025, by one estimate. Cutting back on this consumption has huge climate implications — plus it’s essential for mobile devices and autonomous cars to do complex calculations on the fly.

But an analog computer is built on the physical properties of its components. It can perform multiplication, for example, by utilizing the properties of transistors. “The idea is to let the natural dynamics of the physical system solve the problem,” says Garrett Kenyon of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full story)

 

Study picks up nearly 2 million tiny, undetected earthquakes in California

Seismologists at Caltech and Los Alamos National Laboratory identified 1.81 million tiny tremors hidden in data from 2008 to 2017-roughly one every three minutes. This newly detected seismic activity will help researchers to better understand how earthquakes start. (Full story)

What did Curiosity find on Mars in 2019? Ancient and extinct oasis but worth it

The Curiosity Rover. Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The ChemCam camera atop NASA's Mars Curiosity rover that uses laser beams to analyze Martian rocks to analyze their chemical make-up startled researchers with clues into the planet's past habitability of the Red planet that was believed to be once home to shallow, salty ponds.

In a paper published in October this year in Nature Geoscience, the results from the analysis of rocks enriched in mineral salts in Gale Crater, a 100-mile-wide dry lakebed on Mars came to light from NASA's Curiosity rover.

"Mars' climate was habitable once, long ago," said Roger Wiens, key investigator of the ChemCam instrument at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a co-author of the paper. "What these new findings show is that the climate on Mars was not as stable as we thought it was. There were very wet periods and very dry periods--as these sulfate-rich rocks show us." (Full story)

LANL instrument helps in search for life on Mars

If life exists on Mars, it still hasn’t showed itself — but recent evidence from the Red Planet increasingly supports the possibility. Life could have developed there. Most of the conditions are right, and nothing found so far rules out the possibility, either in the distant past or today.

If something is or was alive on the Red Planet, it’s probably tiny. Because microbes make up the vast majority of life on Earth and live in its most inhospitable environments, they are the most likely thing to find somewhere else. It’s not so easy figuring out what “alive” means on another planet — let alone discovering a living microbe. Scientists are still puzzled by life on Earth — struggling to understand how life started, what it requires to survive, what it looked like 4 billion years ago, and how to recognize traces of ancient life today. (Full story)

LANL Employees Gather Hundreds Of Holiday Gifts For Those In Need

Every year, hundreds of Los Alamos National Laboratory employees spread a little holiday cheer by donating gifts to members of our community in need throughout Northern New Mexico.

This year, the Laboratory collected more than 900 individual requests for gifts from 27 nonprofits and social service agencies across Northern New Mexico. The recipients include infants, children, senior citizens and others facing life challenges. (Full story)