The coronavirus is mutating — does it matter?
In March, David Montefiori, who directs an AIDS-vaccine research laboratory at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, contacted Bette Korber, an expert in HIV evolution and a long-time collaborator. Korber, a computational biologist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in Sante Fe, New Mexico, had already started scouring thousands of coronavirus genetic sequences for mutations that might have changed the virus’s properties as it made its way around the world.
Compared with HIV, SARS-CoV-2 is changing much more slowly as it spreads. But one mutation stood out to Korber. It was in the gene encoding the spike protein, which helps virus particles to penetrate cells. (Full Story)
New antiseptic kills antibiotic-resistant bacteria
To battle super-resilient bacteria, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a new topical ointment designed to kill what were once considered “unkillable” bacteria. Collaborating with Northern Arizona University and Dixie State University, Los Alamos scientists discovered what they have dubbed CAGE, a variation of something called a choline capable of penetrating the deepest skin layers to deliver antibiotics. Choline helps the body improve memory and cognition, protect the heart and boost metabolism, among other things.
To test the effectiveness of CAGE, Los Alamos scientists developed a skin ointment and applied it on 11 clinically isolated bacteria known to be strongly resistant to topical treatment. (Full Story)
LANL scientists study impact of wildfires on health, environment
These scientists were able to track the Medio Fire from the start. The fire began in a dense, dry forest and spread rapidly. It put out black smoke for a few days. "The way we measured the fire growth was by measuring black carbon in our lab,” Dubey said. (Full Story)
Mars 2020 mission looks to find signs of ancient microbial life
According to Dr. Lanza, “living microbes play a role in forming rock varnish on Earth—one we don’t fully understand yet—so maybe they play a role in forming rock varnish on Mars, too. We know that microbes in varnish are well suited to the martian environment. (Full Story)
The mystery of the neutron lifetime
Scientists would like to have a solid number for the neutron lifetime to plug into these equations. They need the uncertainty of the lifetime down to less than a second. But getting this certainty is more difficult than it initially seemed. "The neutron lifetime is one of the least well-known fundamental parameters in the Standard Model," said Zhaowen Tang, a physicist at DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory
"We cannot leave any stones unturned," said Tang. "There are so many examples of people who have seen something, just chucked something to a mistake, not worked on it hard enough, and someone else did and they got the Nobel Prize." (Full Story)
Nascent exascale supercomputers offer promise, present challenges
The transition to exascale will not be easy. “As these machines grow, they become harder and harder to exploit efficiently,” says Danny Perez, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “We have to change our computing paradigms, how we write our programs, and how we arrange computation and data management.”
That’s because supercomputers are complex beasts, consisting of cabinets containing hundreds of thousands of processors. For these processors to operate as a single entity, a supercomputer needs to pass data back and forth between its various parts, running huge numbers of computations at the same time, all while minimizing power consumption. (Full Story)
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