Magnetic north just changed. Here's what that means.

Magnetic north has never sat still. In the last hundred years or so, the direction in which our compasses steadfastly point has lumbered ever northward, driven by Earth's churning liquid outer core some 1,800 miles beneath the surface.

“We know that the pole now is moving faster than it has for decades, but how often does that happen in the long historical record?” inquires Geoff Reeves, a space scientist at Los Alamos National Lab. “We don't have any idea. What we know is what it's doing now is different, and that's always exciting scientifically.” (Full Story)

Research team creates bacterial sensor modeled after the immune system

Left to right: Jessica Kubicek-Sutherland, Harshini Mukundan and Aaron Anderson accept their R&D 100 Award, from R&D.

The human innate immune system is capable of detecting all pathogens quickly, sensitively and effectively. It does this by selectively recognizing and binding to pathogen-specific biomarkers—or bacterial calling cards—via a suite of immune receptors.

A team at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has created a possible solution. They’ve designed a Universal Bacterial Sensor—modeled after the human innate immune system—that mimics the biological recognition of all categories of bacterial pathogens. Requiring less than a drop of blood, it detects all pathogens without prior knowledge of what they might be, before symptom onset and within 15 to 30 minutes. (Full Story)

We need more powerful nuclear engines to explore farther and faster into space

NASA engineers working on the Kilopower reactor system, NASA photo.

NASA has also investigated making more efficient RTGs called eMMRTGs, or enhanced multi-mission RTGs. But to really take a bigger step forward, we have to look at something new. “Eventually we will need higher-power systems. Only fission can supply that in any type of near-term scenario,” says Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher David Poston.

Poston is the chief reactor designer for Kilopower, a prototype fission reactor that NASA successfully testedlast year. It could provide power over the course of long missions, possibly even for human planetary outposts. “The way we evolved it to being feasible was simplifying things,” says Poston. “We’ve had plenty of space reactor programs over the past 30 years, but they’ve all failed. Mostly because they became too expensive.”  (Full Story)

Los Alamos pursues technology for more affordable FCEVs

Yu Seung Kim, LANL photo.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is teaming up with five institutions, including Toyota, to create polymer fuel cells designed to make electric cars less expensive.

Yu Seung Kim and his team’s job is to create a fuel cell that will allow an electric car to run without having to keep the engine cool or using water. “I proposed to make a fuel cell that will work above 100 degrees Celsius, up to 230 degrees Celsius (446 degrees Fahrenheit) without using water,” Kim explained. (Full Story)

In the lab: Asking the right questions

 

Tanmoy Bhattacharya reduces challenges in science and other disciplines to a puzzle of patterns. LANL photo.

In 1980s Kharagpur, India, the patterns dotted on the punch cards caught Tanmoy Bhattacharya’s eye.

Decades later, Bhattacharya, of Los Alamos’ Nuclear and Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology group, now helps maintain and program computers at Los Alamos that crunch complex data to design computational models for vaccines that can predict and possibly prevent HIV — one of the most enduring, complicated and devastating bloodborne diseases on the planet. (Full Story)

Sharp turns cause rivers to meander, migrate

 
According to new research by geologists, current river migration models are unnecessarily complicated. The latest analysis, published this week in the journal Geology, showed that a river's rate of migration is closely correlated with the sharpness of its bends.

"The authors' method for relating curvature to migration rate provides a very nice framework for determining where a simple migration model is appropriate," said Jonathan Schwenk, a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Lab who studies river behavior. "I would love to see this analysis extended to rivers flowing through different environments to really get a sense of the factors that make simple models and the theory diverge from observed migration patterns." (Full Story)

How air conditioners could advance a renewable power grid

UM illustration.

More strategic control of air conditioners could improve the overall efficiency and reliability of the power grid and make it easier to transition to renewable energy, and that’s the goal of a $2.9 million grant University of Michigan researchers have received from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.

In the experimentation stage, the team will build a small distribution feeder of air conditioners in a warehouse at Los Alamos National Laboratory. With this setup, the team will test the load balancing system to its breaking point, and therefore learn how to prevent such issues from occurring in real life. (Full Story)

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Doing work that matters at Los Alamos

From the moment Los Alamos first invented the atomic bomb, the scientists who worked on it knew that its enormous destructive power posed a unique danger to the world and were immediately concerned with how to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

The laboratory’s nuclear nonproliferation work has focused primarily on detection: How will the United States and our allies know if another country is developing or testing nuclear weapons? How will we know if someone is smuggling nuclear material into or out of the country? (Full story)

 

LANL Director Thom Mason reflects on first 90 days

Thom Mason, Daily Post photo.

“During these first 90 days one thing that has really struck me as I’ve visited the various areas of the Laboratory is the total commitment to the Laboratory’s mission by all Lab staff that I’ve met,” Mason said. “They clearly have a sense that their efforts really matter.”

Mason describes the most enjoyable aspect of his job. “The thing I really like is the variety that comes from the breadth of the institution. I can touch in the course of a day the science, the technology, the operations, the community engagement ... that variety really keeps me engaged,” he said. (Full story)

Celebrate the women behind the periodic table

Darleane Hoffman, from Nature.

Here we spotlight some of the women who revolutionized our understanding of the elements. Marie Curie is the most celebrated, for her double Nobel-prizewinning research on radioactivity and for discovering polonium and radium1. Stories of other women’s roles are scarce.

US chemist Darleane Hoffman made a monumental leap in the early 1970s. She showed that the isotope fermium-257 could split spontaneously — not only after being bombarded with neutrons. The first woman to lead a scientific division at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Hoffman also uncovered plutonium-244 in nature. She trained generations of female scientists. (Full story)

 

World’s largest digital sky survey issues biggest astronomical data release ever

Pan-STARRS Observatory Maui, Hawaii.

From PhysOrg

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, in conjunction with the University of Hawai’i Institute for Astronomy (IfA), is releasing the second edition of data from Pan-STARRS—the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System—the world’s largest digital sky survey. The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys and its science archive have been made possible through contributions including the Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full story)

US Military bosses plan to use tiny nuclear reactors to give troops power on the battlefield

Truck-sized small reactor design, LANL image.             

US Military bosses are developing truck-sized nuclear reactors that could power basecamps in remote areas. It is hoped the reactors, which will fit on a truck, could be deployed to the hard to reach bases – such as the hillside forward bases U.S. troops set up in places like Afghanistan.  Currently, Idaho National Lab and Los Alamos National Lab are working toward new designs for modular nuclear power. (Full story)

Watch the video on YouTube

 

Los Alamos wants to slam a spacecraft into an asteroid

Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is famous for its work on the Manhattan Project and other ventures related to national security, intends to work with NASA to test asteroid deflection strategies. According to the YouTube video they just uploaded, the organizations want to hit Didymoon, a small asteroid orbiting a larger one, with a probe, and see what happens. "DART" is expected to launch in 2020, and reach the asteroid sometime in 2022. Check out the plan in the video below: (Full story)

Watch the video on YouTube

Los Alamos National Laboratory issues RFP for Crossroads supercomputer

The next big supercomputer is out for bid. A “request for proposal,” or RFP, for Crossroads, a high-performance computer that will support the nation’s Stockpile Stewardship Program, was released today.

“Los Alamos National Laboratory is proud to serve as the home of Crossroads. This high-performance computer will continue the Laboratory’s tradition of deploying unique capabilities to achieve our mission of national security science,” said Thom Mason, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full story)

Also from HPCwire this week:

LANL deploys DataWarp Tech to speed simulations on Trinity

One of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s central missions is guarding the safety, security and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile as part of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Stockpile Stewardship program. Computer simulation, of course, is key tool in the effort, and LANL uses its Trinity supercomputer (Cray XC40) to run simulations and to explore new technology that could be used to speed simulations.

As LANL points in a description of the issue, “The application runs for extended periods of time — often several months on end. As a result, data flushing to the Lustre file system creates inefficiencies because the application stops completely during the flushing process.” (Full story)

US military eyes tiny nuclear reactors for deployed troops

A truck-sized mini reactor design, LANL image.

Los Alamos National Lab is working toward new designs for modular nuclear power. Andy Erickson, the deputy principal associate director of Global Security at Los Alamos, recently forecast that microreactors could be ready for deployment in “less than five years.”

Last October, the U.S. Army declared that small, mobile nuclear reactors present “a classic example of disruptive innovation,” their study said, “The return of nuclear power to the Army and DOD will have a significant impact on the Army, our allies, the international community, commercial power industry, and the nation.” (Full Story)

Watch the video here!

Flu forecasting models consistently more accurate than historical baseline models

The influenza A virus.

In a multi-institution collaboration assessing 22 distinct influenza forecasting models across 7 flu seasons, investigators have found that the majority of models consistently showed higher accuracy than historical baseline models.

A team of investigators from that includes the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Carnegie Mellon University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Centers for Disease Control and many others collaborated on the project, which compared the accuracy of weekly real-time forecasts assembled between 2010 and 2017 to a historical baseline seasonal average.

"The field of infectious disease forecasting is in its infancy and we expect that innovation will spur improvements in forecasting in the coming years," the authors write in their report published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Full Story)

Los Alamos physicist Michelle Thomsen wins the 2019 Arctowski Medal

Michelle Thomsen, PSI photo.

Michelle F. Thomsen, Planetary Science Institute and Los Alamos National Laboratory, will receive the 2019 Arctowski Medal.

Over the past 40 years, Thomsen has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the relationships between the sun and its planetary bodies, with a particular emphasis on the physics of collisionless shocks and the dynamics of the planetary magnetospheres of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn.

Beginning with her graduate work, Thomsen analyzed data from the early planetary missions Pioneer 10 and 11 and made some of the initial discoveries of the characteristics of the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Saturn that became the foundation for later missions and analyses. (Full Story)

Federal labs an essential part of New Mexico's economy

Laboratory Director Thom Mason, LANL photo.

“Los Alamos National Laboratory is a key economic driver in the region, and we are committed to both growing the local workforce and strengthening the local companies that are crucial in supporting the work we do," said Los Alamos Director Thom Mason

There’s a lot of cool science and research going on at the national laboratories based in New Mexico. It ranges from Los Alamos National Lab’s role in ushering in the nuclear age to the hypersonic vehicle Sandia National Labs is pioneering. (Full Story)

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Editorial: LANL director wise to get New Mexicans on staff

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Director Thomas Mason

Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Thomas Mason is the first to admit the work LANL does will never be popular with a significant portion of the population in New Mexico.

That’s one of the reasons he feels community relations is an important part of LANL’s agenda under new operator Triad National Security LLC.

“There are probably some people who are never going to like what we do because they don’t like nuclear weapons, which is actually understandable,” Mason said in an interview with the Journal. “It is kind of a weird thing to be working really hard on something you really hope will never be used.”

Mason pledges to be as open as possible with the communities with which the labs work. That’s a good start given the nature of the work done by the lab securing our nation’s nuclear arsenal. (Full story)

LANL economic impact is in the billions

Los Alamos National Laboratory had an average annual economic impact of $3.1 billion from 2015-17, according to independent research from the University of New Mexico’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research released Monday. The same entity pegged the lab’s economic impact at $2.3 billion in a similar 2011 report using 2009 data, said David Moore of the lab’s Community Partnerships Office.

The laboratory in the coming year intends to focus on stimulating new business growth and strengthening existing companies. It is doubling the local price preference from 5 to 10 percent given to contract bids from businesses based in the seven counties surrounding the laboratory, according to a news release. (Full story)

Why Did NASA, Lockheed Martin, and Others Spend Millions on This Quantum Computer?

Credit: Gizmodo

So why use bother with one of these devices? We posed that question to researchers using D-Wave computers at Lockheed Martin, Los Alamos National Lab, Volkswagen, and elsewhere. In short, D-Waves are in their early days, but these organizations are hoping to eventually use them to solve problems, like predicting elections, routing taxis in traffic jams, or picking crucial data out of background noise.

This is just something Los Alamos scientists do: They test high performance computers. “It’s an important but modest part of our entire high-performance computing strategy,” John Sarrao, deputy director for science, technology, and engineering at Los Alamos, told Gizmodo. “It is a technology that seems to be interesting, that quantum seems to play a role in, and is available for people who want to try things out. For us, that’s a enough to say it’s worth an exploration as part of a broader overall advanced computing strategy.” (Full story)

Micro-reactors As Cheap As Natural Gas Without Air Pollution

The Megapower micro reactor.

This article looks at the mid-2020 timeline for micro-reactors which has strong Department of Defense interest. Nextbigfuture has been interviewing the project lead, Venkat Rao, for what was the Los Alamos Megapower micro-reactor.

They are working on automated mass production of the heat pipes. Heat pipes are the critical technology for the reactor. They are looking to reduce the cost of heat pipes by ten times.

After the first reactors are built, they will scale up to factory mass production. They will be able to build complete units in one month or less. (Full story)

 

Five cool things you can do with an ‘atom smasher’

The LANSCE control room, LANL photo.

Los Alamos National Laboratory has several accelerators peppered throughout its 43 square miles. By far its largest is the accelerator at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE). The most powerful linear accelerator in the world when it opened in 1972, LANSCE speeds protons, one of the basic building blocks of atoms, to 84 percent the speed of light and energies as high as 800 million electron volts.

The protons traveling down the accelerator are moving a trillion times faster than a mosquito traveling down the same accelerator — that’s a pretty big deal. Protons are very light, so each one carries very little actual energy, but there are so many that together they deliver nearly a megawatt, one million watts, of average power to targets at the end of the accelerator. (Full story)

More stable light comes from intentionally ‘squashed’ quantum dots

Colloidal quantum dots (top) are formed of an emitting cadmium/selenium core, LANL graphic.

Intentionally “squashing” colloidal quantum dots during chemical synthesis creates dots capable of stable, “blink-free” light emission that is fully comparable with the light produced by dots made with more complex processes. The squashed dots emit spectrally narrow light with a highly stable intensity and a non-fluctuating emission energy. New research at Los Alamos National Laboratory suggests that the strained colloidal quantum dots represent a viable alternative to presently employed nanoscale light sources, and they deserve exploration as single-particle, nanoscale light sources for optical “quantum” circuits, ultrasensitive sensors, and medical diagnostics. (Full story)

Gary Grider from Los Alamos on the new Efficient Mission-Centric Computing Consortium

Gary Grider, LANL photo.

insideHPC: Gary, thanks for having me today. We haven’t seen each other for a while. I remember you and I were on a panel in Manhattan, I don’t know, something like 10 years ago at the Structure conference. Anyway, can you tell me more about this new organization you are part of?

Gary Grider: So we’re forming a consortium to chase efficient computing. We see many of the HPC sites today seem to be headed down the path of buying machines that work really well with very dense linear algebra problems. The problem is: hardcore simulation can often not be a great fit on machines built for high Linpack numbers. (Full story)

Also from Inside HPC this week"

Ramping up for Exascale at the National Labs

David Montoya, right, image from Inside HPC.

In this video from the Exascale Computing Project, Dave Montoya from LANL describes the continuous software integration effort at DOE facilities where exascale computers will be located sometime in the next 3-4 years.

A key aspect of the US Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project’s (ECP) continuous integration activities is ensuring that the software in development for exascale can efficiently be deployed at the facilities and that it properly blends with the facilities’ many software components. (Full story)

 

‘Realistic’ new model points way to more efficient and profitable fracking

Illustration of branching into densely

spaced hydraulic cracks, LANL image.

“Our model is far more realistic than current models and software used in the industry,” said Zdeněk Bažant, McCormick Institute Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. “This model could help the industry increase efficiency, decrease cost, and become more profitable.”

Despite the industry’s growth, much of the fracking process remains mysterious. Because fracking happens deep underground, researchers cannot observe the fracture mechanism of how the gas is released from the shale. (Full story)

Venture fund helps with funding, technical aid

Bison Star Naturals owners Jacquelene

and Angelo McHorse with their 1-year-old

daughter, Judy. Photo from the Journal.

At the time of LANL’s management transition, more than $390,000 had been invested in the regional economy through the Native American Venture Acceleration Fund (NA VAF). Triad, LANL’s new manager, has vowed to retain most of the laboratory’s economic development initiatives – programs such as the NA VAF – although a spokesperson said some programs may look different going forward.

2018 recipients include Jacquelene and Angelo McHorse, owners of Bison Star Naturals, Jacqueline Gala Jewelry and PM Waterlily of Taos Pueblo, Butterfly Artist Market of Pojoaque Pueblo, Aguilar Consulting of San Ildefonso Pueblo, and the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council based in Ohkay Owingeh. (Full story)