World

Interesting Factoids About New Year’s Eve/Day

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Courtesy/snopes

WalletHub News:

Countries all around the world have their own unique New Year’s traditions. Many places feature customary cuisine, such as lentils (Brazil and Italy), suckling pig (Austria) and grapes (Spain). Others get a bit more creative. The Danish, for example, smash broken china on friends’ front doors, supposedly in a sign of affection. But you obviously don’t need to go global to learn a lot about New Year’s.

We have plenty of customs right here at home, from watching a giant crystal-covered ball drop in Time’s Square and drinking sparkling spirits at midnight to eating Read More

Beyond Nuclear: NRC Must Publish Flawed Reactor List

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BN News:
 
TAKOMA PARK, Md. ― Beyond Nuclear (BN), a leading national anti-nuclear advocacy group, last week called on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to make public the full list of U.S nuclear power plants that are known to be operating with potentially defective parts imported from France.
 
The flawed components could seriously compromise safety at the nuclear sites, the group warns. Affected reactors should be immediately shut down, BN says.
 
The NRC has refused to reveal the names of all affected U.S. nuclear power plants. So far only one nuclear
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Classical Music World: Concert Hall Tours

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By ANN MCLAUGHLIN, Artistic Director
Los Alamos Concert Association

I don’t really have a bucket list, but I’d like to hear as many of the world’s great orchestras in their home halls as I can before my expiration date rolls around. My husband Bill and I try to take in concerts when we travel and enjoy guided tours of the halls as well.

On two visits to Amsterdam in the last couple of years, we have attended performances in the storied Royal Concertgebouw, a hall famed for its fine acoustic qualities. I had always imagined that this hall would be as lavish as the word “royal” implies, but on a tour our guide Read More

Griggs: Dateline – Villa Tangara, Panajachel, Guatemala

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By DAVID H. GRIGGS, Chaosopher
Foreign Correspondent
Los Alamos Daily Post

“Come South for Gold and Glory!”

What a tantalizing call to action: “Come south of the border and ride with Pancho Villa, the Liberator of Mexico!”

I was ready for a change. The brutal campaign season just ended in the States. The Wall was going up. My meager Social Security pension fund was about to be looted. And on top of that, winter was thrusting its cold shoulder onto the stage.

“Enlistments Taken in Juarez, Mexico.” Perfect – I was on my way across the Rio Grande, anyway, to build a house in Ciudad Juarez with a group from Read More

NNSA Highlights 2016 Successes In Stockpile Stewardship, Nuclear Security, Naval Propulsion And Enterprise Management

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Lt. Gen. Frank G. Klotz (Ret.)
 
NNSA News:
 
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) released “2016 Year in Review,” a report highlighting major accomplishments from the past year across NNSA’s national security missions, and detailing noteworthy improvements in project management and enterprise oversight.
 
“The Nuclear Security Enterprise faces significant challenges. We must sustain an aging nuclear deterrent and modernize the infrastructure that supports it. We must protect nuclear
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LANL: Leaky Plumbing Impedes Greenland Ice Sheet Flow

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On the Greenland Ice Sheet, the ice flow more than doubles in speed in many regions during summer, as surface melt drains to the bed and lubricates the motion. This acceleration sends ice to the sea faster. However, the motion also slows down in late summer, fall, and winter, which largely offsets the summer speedup. New modeling data shows that a complex drainage system beneath the ice holds the giant sheet back more than previously understood. Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

Surface meltwater that drains to the bed of the Greenland Ice Sheet each summer causes changes in ice flow that cannot be fully Read More

Princeton Study: Electron-Photon Small-Talk Could Have Big Impact On Quantum Computing

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PRINCETON News:
 
In a step that brings silicon-based quantum computers closer to reality, researchers at Princeton University have built a device in which a single electron can pass its quantum information to a particle of light.
 
The particle of light, or photon, can then act as a messenger to carry the information to other electrons, creating connections that form the circuits of a quantum computer.
 
The research will appear today in the journal Science. A PDF is available on request. The research was conducted at Princeton and HRL Laboratories in Malibu, Calif.,
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Aspen’s K-Kids ‘Duct The Halls’ With Teachers

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Aspen teachers RaeAnn Harp and Allison Washburn are duct taped to a wall for a worthy cause. Courtesy photo
 
Courtesy photo
 
Courtesy photo
 
COMMUNITY News:
 
Two adventurous teachers at Aspen School, RaeAnn Harp and Allison Washburn, spent much of Tuesday morning getting duct-taped to the dining hall wall (and also having some fun, they would surely admit!) to help raise money toward shipping libraries of books to African primary schools, a project started by retired teacher and former club sponsor Sharon Allen.
 
Thanks to their enthusiasm and
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LANL’s Short Animation On Asteroid Ocean Impacts Takes A First Prize

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Asteroid visualization team. Courtesy photo
 
By ROGER SNODGRASS
Los Alamos Daily Post
 
For the second year in a row, a Los Alamos data visualization team won the Best Visualization and Data Analytics Showcase Award at Supercomputing 2016 in Salt Lake City last month.
 
The content of their 4-minute video illustrates varying degrees of threats from different types and sizes of asteroids landing in the ocean.
 
There’s a lot of traffic bustling about in the vicinity of Earth, not only the objects that orbit the planet, but also asteroids that
Read More

Top Los Alamos Science Stories Of 2016

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LANL News:

  • Scientific advances underscore the Lab’s integrated, multidisciplinary capabilities 

From discoveries on Mars to breakthroughs in cancer and solar cell research, as well as shedding new light on the nature of plutonium, Los Alamos National Laboratory’s 2016 accomplishments highlighted the Lab’s unique capabilities for carrying out its essential national security mission in a broad range of disciplines. Innovations in supercomputing data storage, the use of medical isotopes for cancer treatment, a tissue-engineered artificial lung, and other new technologies Read More