World

LANL: Rocket Motor Concept Could Boost CubeSat Missions

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Artists concept of a CubeSat on-board propulsion system. Courtesy/Inside Out Visuals

LANL News:

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a rocket motor concept that could pave the way for CubeSats zooming across space. These small, low-cost satellites are an easy way for scientists to access space, but are lacking in one key area, on-board propulsion.

“The National Academy of Sciences recently convened a meeting to look at science missions in CubeSats,” said Bryce Tappan, an explosives chemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead researcher on the CubeSat Read More

Science Magazine Reviews ‘Doomed To Cooperate’

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By EDWARD BIRNBAUM
Los Alamos

Science magazine, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), typically selects on average only two to three science books to review each week, so the fact that a review of Sig Hecker’s two-volume set, “Doomed to Cooperate” appeared in the Sept. 23, 2016 issue of Science is a significant recognition of this literary effort at the national level.

This book set, published by the Bathtub Row Press under the auspices of the Los Alamos Historical Society, deals with the cooperative efforts of Russian and American Read More

China Town Hall – Live Webcast With Dr. Henry Kissinger Followed By Interactive Panel Discussion

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Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
 
CIR News:
 
Live webcast discussion with Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, former Secretary of State, moderated by Mr. Stephen A. Orlins, President, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations followed by an interactive panel discussion with Mr. Brian Goldbeck and CIR Board President, Mr. Herb Thomas, both retired from U.S. State Department, previously stationed in China.
 
Date: 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 18
Location: Southwest Annex, Santa Fe University of Art & Design, 1600 St. Michael’s Drive
Cost: $20 Non-members;
Read More

E-Book Version Of Doomed To Cooperate Now Available

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Doomed to Cooperate book cover. Courtesy photo
 
COMMUNITY News:
 
Doomed to Cooperate, a two-volume set of books sharing stories of lab-to-lab collaboration between the United States and Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, is now available as an e-book.
 
Published by Bathtub Row Press, the imprint of the Los Alamos Historical Society, the new digital format readers a way to engage with more than 100 Russian and American papers, vignettes, and interviews.

Doomed to Cooperate: How American and Russian Scientists Joined Forces to Avert Some of the Greatest Post–Cold

Read More

2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Awarded To Yoshinori Ohsumi

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NOBEL PRIZE News:

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Yoshinori Ohsumi for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy

This year’s Nobel Laureate discovered and elucidated mechanisms underlying autophagy, a fundamental process for degrading and recycling cellular components.  

Yoshinori Ohsumi

The word autophagy originates from the Greek words auto-, meaning “self”, and phagein, meaning “to eat”. Thus,autophagy denotes “self eating”. This Read More

Research Suggests Saturn’s Moon Dione May Harbor Subsurface Ocean

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An image of Saturn’s icy moon Dione, with giant Saturn and its rings in the background. New research suggests Dione harbors a subsurface ocean. Courtesy/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
 
AGU News:
 
By The Royal Observatory of Belgium
 
A subsurface ocean could lie deep within Saturn’s moon Dione, according to a new study using publicly available data from the Cassini mission to Saturn.
 
In 2013, images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft hinted that Dione had a subsurface ocean when the moon formed, but the new study suggests the ocean could still
Read More

Police Arrest Pigeon Carrying Threatening Note

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Pakistani spy pigeon apprehended in India. Courtesy/lahoremonitor

HSNW News:

The Indian police said they have taken a pigeon into custody after the bird was found carrying a threatening note against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The pigeon was detained near India’s heavily militarized border with Pakistan. The Financial Times reports that India’s Border Security Force (BSF) officers found the bird at Pathankot in the northern state of Punjab. Punjab has suffered many terrorist attacks from Pakistan-based Islamist militants.

“We took it into custody last evening,” Read More

NNSA And Bulgaria Partner To Complete Nuclear Detection Architecture

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NNSA News:
 
SOFIA, BULGARIA ― Representatives of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA), the U.S. Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the Bulgarian government this week celebrated the completion of Bulgaria’s nuclear detection architecture, which will enhance efforts to prevent smuggling of dangerous radioactive materials across its borders.
 
National and foreign dignitaries, including U.S. Ambassador Eric Rubin and Deputy Prime Minister Rumiana Bachvarova, gathered in Sofia to highlight the successful implementation
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Feeling the Burn: Understanding How Biomass Burning Changes Climate

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Allison C. Aiken is a chemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Division. In 2014, at the age of 34, she was named one of  ‘The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds’ by Thomson Reuters for being in the top 1 percent of geoscientists to have her work cited. She is posing in front of a crab sign on Ascension Island, where she installs instruments to collect data about black carbon aerosols. The island is tropical, but very isolated with rugged volcanic terrain and dominated by non-native species. There are, however, some interesting and rare Read More

The Nobel Prize In Physics 2016: David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane, J. Michael Kosterlitz

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NOBEL PRIZE News:

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2016 with one half to David J. Thouless of the University of Washington in Seattle and the other half to

F. Duncan M. Haldane of Princeton University and J. Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University “for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”.

They revealed the secrets of exotic matter:

This year’s Laureates opened the door on an unknown world where matter can assume strange states. They have used advanced mathematical methods to study unusual Read More