Professor Emmanuel De Moor performing heat treatments of machined tensile specimens using molten salt to provide fast and controlled temperature changes to match the “Quench & Partitioning” processing requirements. Photos courtesy of Colorado School of Mines. Courtesy/LANL

Auto industry steel project to boost efficiency, safety

• Los Alamos partners with Colorado School of Mines in $1.2 million clean-energy manufacturing project

Higher-strength, lighter-weight steels could be coming to a car near you in the near future as part of a U.S. Department of Energy advanced manufacturing Read More

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Dead Piñon: Piñon trees show increased susceptibility to drought when also subjected to rising temperatures. Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

Rising Global Temperatures Accelerate Drought-induced Forest Mortality

• Research has dire global implications for forests

Many southwestern forests in the United States will disappear or be heavily altered by 2050, according to a series of joint Los Alamos National Laboratory-University of New Mexico studies.

In a new video produced by Los Alamos, Nathan McDowell, a Los Alamos plant physiologist, and William Pockman, a UNM biology professor, explain Read More

Mixing and classification of soot particles. Field-emission scanning electron microscope images of four different categories of soot particles: (a) embedded, (b) partly coated, (c) bare and (d) with inclusions. Approximately 50 percent of the ambient soot particles are embedded, 34 percent are partly coated and 12 percent have inclusions. Only 4 percent of the particles are bare soot (not coated or very thinly coated). Scale bars, 500 nm. Right, spherical tar balls dominate in the emissions. Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

• Particle analysis shows “tar ball” effect is significant

Wildfires Read More

A shipment carrying Los Alamos transuranic waste heads down N.M. 502, bound for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southeastern New Mexico. Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

Los Alamos Exceeds Waste Shipping Goal

• Lab breaks another record with three months remaining in fiscal year

Los Alamos National Laboratory, which broke its waste shipping records in 2012, has exceeded last year’s record with three months left to go in fiscal year 2013.

During the past nine months, Los Alamos shipped 1,074 cubic meters of transuranic (TRU) and mixed low-level waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and other approved Read More