Science

New Mexico Museum Of Natural History & Science Paleontologist Co-Authors Study On Mammal Brain

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The skull of the prehistoric mammal Claenodon ferox. A new study from the University of Edinburgh that was co-authored by Dr. Thomas Williamson, Curator of Paleontology at NMMNHS, shows that for the first 10 million years after dinosaurs died out, mammals prioritized boosting their body size to adapt to radical shifts in the make-up of Earth’s animal kingdom. The findings were published in the journal Science. Courtesy/NMMNHS

NMMNHS News:

ALBUQUERQUE — A paleontologist from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science (NMMNHS) assisted with research on the brain development Read More

LANL: Perseverance Analyzes First Sounds From Mars

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The Perseverance with the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars April 7, 2021. Courtesy/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

LANL News:

The NASA Perseverance rover, which has been exploring the Jezero Crater on Mars since February 2021, has recorded the acoustic environment of the red planet for the first time. Using the SuperCam microphone developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and a consortium of French universities under the Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales, an international research team published the first analysis of these sounds April 1 in Nature.

“For the first time we were able to record Read More

LANL: Pandemic’s Urgency Drove New Collaborative Approaches Worldwide

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Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

  • SAVE team changed how science is done, spanning 58 institutions

In a paper in the journal Nature, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) scientists Bette Korber, Hyejin Yoon, Will Fischer and James Theiler, among nearly 130 authors from institutions around the world, describe their groundbreaking collaborative work, “Defining the risk of SARS-CoV-2 variants on immune protection.”

Korber, Fischer, Yoon and Theiler are members of a rarified team that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases assembled in January 2021, drawing on experts from Read More

Carr Lectures On Secret Los Alamos At Smith Auditorium April 4

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LANL Historian Alan B. Carr stands near one of the Trinity Site bunkers positioned nearly two miles from ground zero where the first nuclear bomb test happened in the Jornada del Muerto desert, 35 miles southeast of Socorro. Carr Lectures On Secret Los Alamos At Smith Auditorium April 4. Courtesy/LANL

JROMC News:

Alan B. Carr, Program Manager and Senior Historian for Los Alamos National Laboratory, will give an illustrated talk on “Manhattan: The View from Los Alamos of History’s Most Secret Project” at 7 p.m. Monday, April 4 at the Duane Smith Auditorium.

Sponsored by the J. Robert Oppenheimer Read More

LANL: A New, Data-driven Model Could Help The World Meet Clean-energy Demands

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‘LAROMance’ predicts metals’ response to extreme conditions. Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

LAROMance is a data-driven model that predicts the mechanical response of structural engineering metals subjected to extreme environments, such as those in nuclear power plants and wind turbines.

Metallurgy has advanced society for millennia.

The earliest metal used by humans was copper. Fast forward 10,000 years, and now we’re using metals to meet essential global-energy demands. This is because many of the proposed clean-energy solutions hinge on the ability to understand and predict how metallic Read More

Developing Design Tools For Outer Space Structures

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Liang Zhang of AnalySwift, left, and Wenbin Yu of Purdue’s College of Engineering stand in front of models of lightweight structures made from tailorable composites. Yu is principal investigator and Zhang one of two co-investigators on a research project funded by a Phase I STTR contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Courtesy/Wenbin Yu

Purdue University News:

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Achieving affordable space exploration will require lightweight structures for vehicles, solar arrays and antennas. Lightweight materials also will be used for components of Read More

Home On The Range: From Ranches To Rockets Lecture

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General Electric employees posing on a V-2 rocket at White Sands Proving Ground (now White Sands Missile Range) in New Mexico. Courtesy/WSMR

NMMSH News:

ALAMAGORDO — At the turn of the 20th century, most of the arid land east of Las Cruces was ranch land. Cattle, sheep, and goat ranches filled the Tularosa Basin, the Oscuro Range and the surrounding countryside.

Most of these ranches were small privately owned pieces of land supplemented by large parcels of federal and state property, which ranchers leased for grazing purposes.

These self-sufficient ranchers had maintained their homes for Read More

LANL News Roundup For Week Of March 21, 2022

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LANL News:

A weekly compilation of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s (LANL) news stories for the week of March 21.

 

Science:

Un-Earthing planetary defense:

This summer, NASA will launch its first mission to a metallic asteroid, 16 Psyche, located in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Previous missions have explored rocky and icy asteroids, but Psyche’s composition is widely believed to consist of a considerable amount of metal. Psyche has two large impact structures in its southern hemisphere. Simulating the formation of these craters using computational Read More

Major Bioscience Company Curia Expands In New Mexico With Help Of State Funds

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EDD News:

ALBUQUERQUE — Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and company officials announced Thursday that Curia, formerly AMRI, a leading contract research, development, and manufacturing organization, is expanding its operational facilities in New Mexico and plans to add substantially to its workforce. 

The company is set to add up to 274 employees in Albuquerque with an average salary over $50,000. The State of New Mexico is contributing up to $5 million to support the expansion through assistance from the Local Economic Development Act (LEDA) job-creation fund. The company is also eligible Read More

LANL: New Software Could Help Transform Budding Bioplastics Industry

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From left, Ghanshyam Pilania, Carl Iverson, Babetta Marone and Joseph Dumont of the BioManIAC project. Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

Single-use plastics, such as water bottles, grocery bags, food packaging and the like make up around 50 percent of the world’s estimated 380 million tons of global plastic waste each year.

While manufacturers are working to improve offerings in bioplastics, we are still decades away from truly competitive biodegradable solutions. High costs and time-consuming traditional research and development are required for new plastics.

But a new tool from Los Alamos Read More