National Laboratory

This is a still shot of the artificial jellyfish. Courtesy/Harvard University-Caltech

ScienceDaily — Using recent advances in marine biomechanics, materials science, and tissue engineering, a team of researchers at Harvard University and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have turned inanimate silicone and living cardiac muscle cells into a freely swimming “jellyfish.”

The finding serves as a proof of concept for reverse engineering a variety of muscular organs and simple life forms. It also suggests a broader definition of what counts as synthetic life Read More

LANL News:

• Amy J. Clarke, materials scientist, studies uranium alloys

Amy J. Clarke, a young Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist, is among the honorees that President Obama named today as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

“Discoveries in science and technology not only strengthen our economy, they inspire us as a people.” President Obama said. “The impressive accomplishments of today’s awardees so early in their careers promise even greater advances in the years ahead.”

This is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government Read More

With the aim of improving forecasts of space weather, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory will peer deep inside the sun, to where the solar magnetic field is generated. It also will keep tabs on how energy is released into the solar atmosphere and how the sun’s output of extreme ultraviolet radiation varies. Courtesy/NASA, Ryan Zuber

NIST News:

The sun is about to undergo unremitting scrutiny. About six times each minute of every hour for at least five years, a soon-to-be launched NASA satellite will measure the sun’s quirky—and sometimes stormy—output of extreme ultraviolet Read More