On the job in Los Alamos are Los Alamos Public Schools science teachers taking a break from an in-service day Thursday to have lunch at Cottonwood on the Greens, from left, Kathy Boerigter, Elizabeth Bowden, Ali Renner, Kate Whitty, Michela Ombelli, Debbie Grothaus, Stephanie Mitchell, Chris Peters and Eva Abeyta. Photo by Maire O’Neill/ladailypost.com Read More
Science
AGU: South Napa Earthquake Linked To Summer Groundwater Dip
Surface ruptures from the August 2014 South Napa earthquake run through a vineyard near Buhman Road, Napa Valley, California. Courtesy/Dan Ponti, US Geological Survey
Plate Boundary Observatory GPS station P199 overlooks the Sonoma Valley, California. Data from the station demonstrated contraction in the valley during the summer, which contributes to seasonal stress on the fault that ruptured in the magnitude 6.0 South Napa Earthquake in 2014. Courtesy/UNAVCOAGU News:
A summertime expansion in the Earth’s crust caused by changes in groundwater may have triggered
Read More Glenn Branch Lecture On Climate Change June 22
NIST: Can A Computer Think Like A Human?
NIST News:Computers do many things better than our brains can. But one area where brains tend to outperform computers is in tasks such as perception, decision making, and context recognition.
A reason for this is that our brains process data both in sequence and simultaneously, and they store memories in synapses — connections between the brain’s nerve cells — all over the system. A conventional computer processes data only in sequence and stores memory in a separate unit.
Devices mimicking the brain’s nerve cells have been developed. But until now, a crucial piece of the
Read More Los Alamos National Laboratory And U.S. Army Working On Replacement For Toxic TNT
Chavez TNT Replacement: Explosives chemist David Chavez pours an example of melt-castable explosive into a copper mold at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Technical Area 9. Courtesy/LANL
LANL News:
Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Md., have developed a novel “melt-cast” explosive material that could be a suitable replacement for Trinitrotoluene, more commonly known as TNT.
“The Army and the Laboratory, through the Joint Munitions Program, have been looking for a TNT replacement,” said David Chavez, Read More
SFI: The Nature Of Time – Panel Discussion June 19
Adolf Hoffmeister, ‘The City of Lost Time’ (1964). Courtesy/SFISFI News:
What could be more mysterious, more precious, and more fleeting than time?
Heraclitus described time as “a game played beautifully by children”, Albert Einstein declared “time is an illusion”, and Jane Austen wrote that “time will explain”. Science has sought to explain time in terms of clocks, space, energy, perception, and convenience. Everyone agrees that we do not have enough of it and that we perceive it to be moving faster year by year.
This panel discusses the challenges of time in physics,
Read More PEEC: Discoveries Of NASA Kepler Mission Friday
Joyce GuzikPEEC News:
Join Joyce Guzik to discuss the discoveries of the NASA Kepler Mission at 7 p.m. Friday, June 15, in a lecture at the Los Alamos Nature Center.
The Kepler spacecraft was launched in March 2009 into an Earth-trailing orbit around the Sun. So far, it has discovered 2,649 planets around other stars.
Kepler has also examined brightness variations for hundreds of thousands of stars, revealing many new variable star types and providing data for researchers to infer the size, mass, age, and interior structure of stars, a field known as “asteroseismology.”
Read More Los Alamos Faith & Science Forum: Darwin And Beyond
Chick Keller
LAFASF News:
On Wednesday, June 20, Chick Keller presents the third talk in the Los Alamos Faith and Science Forum summer series. The title of Keller’s talk is “Darwin and Beyond”. The theme of the 2018 Summer Series is “Purposeful Evolution”.
Our current understanding of how the Earth came to be filled with different, but apparently related, animals is that they evolved from simple organisms to the very complex ones we see today. Thus, complex life (including humans) appeared gradually through evolution. However, current theories of evolution seem to say that this process is Read More
Just One Month ‘Til Los Alamos ScienceFest!
A STEAM exhibitor talking with a young attendee at a previous ScienceFest. Courtesy photo
A young girl at the controls getting hands-on experience at a recent ScienceFest. Courtesy photo
Los Alamos MainStreet News:
Each year, thousands flock to Los Alamos—home of groundbreaking science where discoveries are made—for the three-time award-winning ScienceFest.
2018 marks ScienceFest’s 11th year and is July 11-15 with a “Science Rules in Los Alamos” theme.
“ScienceFest is a must-attend, five-day festival complete with live music, interactive and family-friendly events for all ages and Read More
UNM-LA: Free Cyber-Puzzles Workshop For Girls
UNM-LA News:
Girls entering grades 7-11 in fall 2018 are invited to participate in a no-cost day-long computer security learning event at UNM-Los Alamos (UNM-LA).
The event, called Queen Of The Hill (QOTH) meets 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, June 16. QOTH is organized by Neale Pickett, a research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Pickett has been teaching computer security defense techniques at the middle-school and high-school level since 2010. For QOTH, he works with a group of computer security professionals using the moniker “The Dirtbags” who provide software and Read More