Los Alamos lab works to quicken disease monitoring
High throughput sequencing Lab undergoes testing at LANL. LANL Photo.Two out of every three diseases in humans originated in animals - witness the current swine flu pandemic - and a Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher believes that points to a need for better surveillance.
Tony Beugelsdijk, group leader for chemical diagnostics and engineering at the lab, envisions an automated network doing animal surveillance at a scale the world has never seen - able to sample not just hundreds or thousands but millions of animals and process samples quickly at a very low cost.
Read the whole story in the San Francisco Chronicle. This also appeared in the Albuquerque Journal, the Santa Fe New Mexican, and a variety of major city daily newspapers.
Los Alamos, Sandia get federal funds for projects
Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories are getting $56 million to fund three projects under a new initiative called Energy Frontier Research Centers.
Los Alamos is receiving $38 million, equally divided between projects to design better materials for converting sunlight into electricity and to study materials under extreme stress. See the CNBC/Associated Press coverage here. This story also appeared in the Albuquerque Journal and the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Research parks could help predict ecological impacts
A Mexican spotted owl on LANL property. LANL photo.The Los Alamos park covers 28,400 acres of juniper-piñon forest and grassland and is home to five vegetation zones.
There are more than 900 species of vascular plants, 57 species of mammals, more than 200 species of birds and a host of other wildlife. Full story here.
UNM Cancer Center Designated as
NIH Center for Systems Biology
Center co-leaders include Drs. Bridget Wilson and Jeremy Edwards from the UNM Cancer Center, Dr. Stanly Steinberg from the UNM Department of Mathematics and Statistics and Dr. William Hlavacek from Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Systems biology is an emerging field that integrates quantitative measurements, new technologies and computational modeling to answer questions about fundamental biological processes that take place in cells, tissues and organisms. See the full story here.
Inside Look at Cellulose Provides Insight
into Cotton Crystals
Hydrogen bonds in plant cellulose. LANL illustration.Using a neutron beam to study nanocrystals, researchers have provided new information about hydrogen bonds that connect the building blocks of cellulose, the main molecule in cotton fibers and most other plant cell walls.
The study was coauthored by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists with lead collaborators from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France. See the whole story here.
NASA/DOE team moving forward
on fission surface power technology
Notional Lunar Fission Surface Power System. Image from Space Fellowship.The test loop at [NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center] included an electrically heated reactor simulator designed by Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM and an electromagnetic pump supplied by Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, Idaho. (Full Story)
LANL Foundation gets new appointees
The Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation has appointed five new members to its board of directors. The appointees are Julia T. Abeyta, Catherine Martinez Berryhill, Raymond M. Chavez, Richard A. Marquez, and Ginger Richardson. See the News In Brief here.
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