Smoky skies raise health concerns
Los Alamos National Laboratory atmospheric scientist Manvendra Dubey scans his computer screen, eyeing a map of wildfire smoke plumes swirling across the U.S. The thick smoke has blanketed northern and central New Mexico for the past several days, making air quality unhealthy and obscuring mountain ranges and city skylines.
Dubey studies wildfire smoke chemicals and how the pollution moves. “Urban smog is bad enough, but fire smoke is even more complex,” Dubey said. LANL scientists are part of the emerging field of testing wildfire smoke particles to determine the size and distribution of specific chemicals. (Full Story)
Silicon nanowires grown on a stainless steel disk, LANL image.
In silicon-wire lithium-ion batteries, the electrolyte can carve away the silicon, blocking electron pathways and greatly diminishing the charging capacity of these promising devices. Now, in a paper in Nature Nanotechnology, researchers report how their detailed investigations of this process could open up fresh research avenues for finally harnessing the great potential of silicon for revolutionizing high-capacity, long-lasting batteries for everything from cell phones to automobiles.
“With this new understanding, we propose to improve silicon nanowire lithium-ion battery performance by developing a coating approach that isolates the silicon from the electrolyte,” said Jinkyoung Yoo, a Los Alamos National Laboratory staff scientist and a corresponding author of the paper. (Full Story)
DNA illustration from SciTech Daily.
In support of a major collaborative project to store massive amounts of data in DNA molecules, a Los Alamos National Laboratory–led team has developed a key enabling technology that translates digital binary files into the four-letter genetic alphabet needed for molecular storage.
“Our software, the Adaptive DNA Storage Codec (ADS Codex), translates data files from what a computer understands into what biology understands,” said Latchesar Ionkov, a computer scientist at Los Alamos and principal investigator on the project. “It’s like translating from English to Chinese, only harder.” (Full Story)
Study assesses advances and commercialization of colloidal quantum dots
Quantum dots can be tuned to emit light in specific wavelengths, LANL photo.
A new study published in Science magazine offers an outline of nearly 30 years of research performed on colloidal quantum dots. Several advances explained in the Science article were started at Los Alamos, including the first illustration of colloidal quantum dot lasing.
"Thirty years ago, these structures were just a subject of scientific curiosity studied by a small group of enthusiasts. Over the years, quantum dots have become industrial-grade materials exploited in a range of traditional and emerging technologies, some of which have already found their way into commercial markets." Said Victor I. Klimov, Study Co-Author and Leader, Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full Story)
LANL employees’ generosity provides more than 700 backpacks
The Lab’s Community Partnerships Office (CPO) distributed 95 backpacks funded by employees to the City of Espanola’s Project RACE school supply drive. With some larger school districts already covered by other drives, CPO also used employee donations to purchase 650 backpacks with supplies from a local small business, and distributed them to five rural school districts in Northern New Mexico that expressed a need. (Full Story)
