Science

Los Alamos School Board Meeting Summary

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Standing from left, Los Alamos Heart Council Chair Phil Gursky, Fire Chief Troy Hughes and LAMC CEO John Whiteside donate an AED to provide potentially life-saving first aid for students and spectators at Sullivan Field. Courtesy photo

School Board member Stephen Boerigter listens as Los Alamos High School science teachers Debbie Grothaus and Stephanie Mitchell present information about the transition to Next Generation Science Standards in classroom instruction. Courtesy photo

LAPS News:

The Los Alamos Public School’s Board met for a regular school board meeting Tuesday, Nov. 13; Read More

LANL Profile: Physicist Donald Sandoval Is A Master Of The Loom

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Donald Sandoval is a fifth generation weaver. Courtesy/LANL

Donald Sandoval works in the laboratory’s Primary Physics Group. Courtesy/LANL

 
LANL News:
 
Donald Sandoval, of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Primary Physics group, stands before a loom made by his father and weaves a tapestry. The weaving process itself is not too complicated but does take time, so Sandoval’s mind tends to wander. His thoughts often venture to his day job as a mechanical engineer supporting the Lab’s national security mission. Sandoval said he has often solved complicated engineering and mathematical
Read More

Stump PEEC’s Astronomers At Planetarium Friday

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PEEC News:
 
The community is invited to test its knowledge of astronomy this Friday evening at the Los Alamos Nature Center’s planetarium during a “Stump the Astronomers!” panel.
 
This event begins at 7 p.m., Nov. 16 and will feature 10 local astronomers. Bring along the toughest astronomy-related questions and get ready for an evening of fun.
 
Astronomer Rick Wallace will be the MC for the evening and the panel will include Paul Arendt, Steve Becker, Chick Keller, Akkana Peck, Dave North, Dan Reisenfeld, Jonas Lippuner, Jonah Miller and Peter Polko. These astronomers have
Read More

AGU: Powerful Solar Storm Likely Detonated Mines During Vietnam War

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A solar flare bursts off the left limb of the sun in this image captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Courtesy/NASA/SDO/Goddard/Wiessinger
 
AGU News:
 
A strong solar storm in 1972 caused widespread disturbances to satellites and spacecraft, and may have led to the detonation of mines during the Vietnam War, according to new research showing the event may have been a more devastating solar storm than previously thought.
 
In a new study in Space Weather, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, researchers pieced together data and historical records related
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Experience Mars InSight Landing At NMMNH&S

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Courtesy/NASA
 
NASA News:
 
ALBUQUERQUE ― NASA exploration landings on Mars are always exciting events, and the next one will touchdown Nov. 26, 2018.
 
The New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science will host a landing party that day from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. Learn about the latest mission to study the interior of Mars during a live NASA broadcast. Mars-related hands-on activities, videos, and local solar system experts will also be available.
 
Mars InSight will arrive on Mars at around 1 p.m. MST, Nov. 26. The lander will plunge through the thin Martian atmosphere,
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World Futures: Artificial Intelligence – Part Two

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By ANDY ANDREWS
Los Alamos World Futures Institute
 
In the last column we looked at the “human” machine in exploring intelligence and established that it takes roughly 18 years to program the machine to function in humanity and that learning by the complex computer called the brain never ceases until the machine fails completely.
 
It is worthwhile to note that the earliest members of the genus homo, of which we are a part, dates back over two million years and fossils of anatomically modern humans are about 200,000 years old. It took us a long, long time to get to where we
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STEM Boomerang Planned In Albuquerque Dec. 20

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STEM BOOMERANG News:
 
ALBUQUERQUE — For the second year in a row, business, academic and economic development and government leaders from the city, state and region will converge at The University of New Mexico meet with recent, highly-trained STEM professionals who are in and out of New Mexico.
 
The purpose of the STEM Boomerang is to connect the dots between the many highly-paid job opportunities that exist in New Mexico in the science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) and other technical areas and graduates from New Mexico who may wrongly believe that the state has
Read More

HSNW: Unhackable Computers

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Unhackable computer under development with $3.6M DARPA grant. Courtesy/U-M

HSNW News:

  • Relying on firmware security rather than software patches

By turning computer circuits into unsolvable puzzles, a University of Michigan team aims to create an unhackable computer with a new $3.6 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Todd Austin, U-M professor of computer science and engineering, leads the project, called MORPHEUS. Its cybersecurity approach is dramatically different from today’s, which relies on software—specifically software patches to Read More

LAHS Project Y Team Host Women In STEM Night

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Dr. Mandie Gehring speaks to LAHS students Thursday about ‘Finding Your Superpower, a Guide to STEM’ at the Project Y STEM Center. Courtesy photo

LAHS News:

The Los Alamos High School Robotics Team, Project Y, hosted a talk Thursday by Dr. Mandie Gehring at the Project Y STEM Center on “Finding Your Superpower, a Guide to STEM” to LAHS students.

Dr. Gehring discussed her career in nuclear physics, why it is fun to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the challenges she faced to obtain her PhD, and generally shared her passion about physics with the high school students.

The talk was hosted to encourage Read More

World Futures: Artificial Intelligence – Part One

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By ANDY ANDREWS
Los Alamos World Futures Institute

At the end of the last column I stated that this week we would begin looking at artificial intelligence or AI. It was my belief that writing a bit (or byte) about AI would be easy, after all the term is used everywhere in advertising, it tells me what I like to watch on Netflix, and it is essential for science fiction such as RUR – Russumovi Univerzaini Roboti or “Rossum’s Universal Robots.” But what is AI in reality? Let’s start with artificial.

Going to the cell phone that tries to control me, I looked up “artificial.” From Google, artificial means “made Read More