Science

LANL Team Sets Sail For Arctic Year-Long Expedition

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Los Alamos staff members Paul Ortega and David Chu join team members from other institutions boarding the R/V Polarstern for months locked in the ice to study the Arctic. Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

  • As part of MOSAiC field campaign, environmental researchers will operate a suite of instruments 24/7 as ship drifts in ice for the winter

Heading off to spend months on a ship trapped in the Arctic ice, a team from Los Alamos National Laboratory got underway last week aboard the R/V Polarstern from Tromso, Norway.

The team is supporting MOSAiC, the Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory Read More

Amateur Naturalist: Finding History In A Forest, Part 2

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By ROBERT DRYJA
Los Alamos

The Valles Caldera was known initially as the Baca Ranch, named after the original owners of it.

The Baca family had wanted it for sheepherding. Sheepherding grew in size after the 1880’s before declining in the 1940s. Up to 100,000 sheep were brought annually to the Valles Caldera to graze on its meadows.

What were the shepherds like who watched over the sheep? Assumedly most came from the small rural Hispanic villages in northern New Mexico. Their carvings on the aspen trees of the Valles Caldera provide some additional clues. The ideal carving done a by sheepherder Read More

Ledoux: Exploring Mysteries Of Living – Some Fictitious Causes

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By STEPHEN F. LEDOUX
Los Alamos member of
The International Behaviorology Institute

The magazine, Consumer Reports, regularly carries articles on the benefits of maintaining a healthy weight, even if that requires some special diet. All too commonly, people claim that to maintain a diet one must restrain oneself from all the chocolates (Heaven forbid!) and one must exert lots of will power to eat only the right foods in the right amounts.

Are self restraint and will power really the causes of successful dieting behavior? Are they the only or best advice for healthy and successful dieting? Or Read More

Public Astronomy Dark Night Saturday Sept. 28

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Pajarito Astronomers News:

The Pajarito Astronomers will be holding a County-Sponsored Dark Night starting at 6:45 p.m. (sunset), Saturday, Sept. 28 at Spirio Soccer Field, Overlook Park in White Rock.

Weather permitting, the public is invited to come out, wander among the telescopes and star gaze.

The six planets Mercury, Venus, Jupiter (with its moons), Saturn (and its rings), Neptune and Uranus will potentially be visible during the evening. There will be a tour of the late-summer and fall constellations and there will be telescope views of double stars, star clusters, nebulae and galaxies. Read More

Study By LANL Atmospheric Physicist Michael Peterson Finds Lightning Flashes Illuminate Storm Behavior

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A comparison of GLM imagery products for a large thunderstorm over South America. The total energy measured by GLM in (a) differs from the idealized energy distribution in (b), and this difference forms the basis of the thundercloud imagery product in (c) that highlights the texture of the uppermost cloud layer (north) as well as long horizontal lightning flashes behind the thunderstorm core (south). Courtesy/Michael Peterson/LANL
 
AGU News:
 
Anybody who has ever tried to photograph lightning knows that it takes patience and special camera equipment.
 
Now, a new study
Read More

Rotary: Lillian Petersen Discusses Research

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Los Alamos High School senior Lillian Petersen has won multiple awards at Intel Science and Engineering competitions. At a recent meeting of the Rotary Club of Los Alamos, she described how she analyzes large data sets to investigate climate, agriculture, malnutrition and poverty. She explained her research on creating a real-time monitoring system to predict crop yields in every African nation several months before harvest and how this tool can predict areas of malnutrition. Her work has captured global attention, and she has been an invited speaker at 11 different aid organizations
Read More

U.S. Sen. Tom Udall Secures Funding For New Mexico’s National Labs, WIPP, Nuclear Safety…

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U.S. SENATE News:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M), senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, voted to advance key legislation to provide strong funding for New Mexico’s national labs, technology transfer efforts, environmental clean-up projects, the Waste Isolation Pilot Program (WIPP), and Tribal energy programs throughout the state.

Udall joined the Senate Appropriations Committee in voting unanimously to advance the Fiscal Year 2020 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill to the Senate floor.

“This funding will help bolster New Mexico’s thriving Read More

Fuselier: The Seeking Emotional System

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By BOB FUSELIER
Los Alamos

Some thoughts from science, life, and ancient religious texts

By BOB FUSELIER
Los Alamos

Some thoughts from science, life, and ancient religious texts

In an earlier essay, I touched on the choice that we share with all animals: either to go forward towards resources that sustain us or to draw away from that which can cause us harm. The emotional system that controls our forward motion has been labeled the Seeking emotional system by the noted neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp. While it’s needed for life, this emotional system can lead us into a lot of trouble.

Such is the way Read More

LAHS Student Aims To End Malnutrition In The World

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Havard University student Garyk Brixi and Los Alamos High School student Lillian Peterson at the International Science Fair in May in Phoenix, Ariz. Courtesy photo
 
By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com

Malnutrition is the leading cause of death for children globally and Lillian Petersen, a senior at Los Alamos High School, along with her partner Garyk Brixi of Maryland, is doing something about it.

They created computer software that can help inform aid organizations on the most effective way to treat malnourished children. Malnutrition is a clinical Read More