World

Hunter College Creates Super Sniffer Mice

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Destined to be the bomb detector of the future. Courtesy/commons.wikimedia.org

HSNW News:

Researchers at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, have created super-sniffer mice that have an increased ability to detect a specific odor, according to a study published 7 July in Cell Reports. The mice, which can be tuned to have different levels of sensitivity to any smell by using mouse or human odor receptors, could be used as land-mine detectors or as the basis for novel disease sensors.

The technology, a transgenic approach to engineering the mouse genome, could also Read More

Tips To Becoming More Generous

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Gregory Baumer was a 25-year-old analyst at a Boston private equity firm pulling down $250,000 a year. Why not drop $1,000 a month for dinners out with his wife? Baumer was a Spender. Courtesy photo

EMSI News:

Americans like to think of themselves as generous people.

John Cortines was earning six figures as a petroleum engineer for a major oil company in Louisiana. He so delighted in the prospect of shoring up wealth for his young family that his online banking password was ‘retire_at_40!’ Cortines was a Saver. Courtesy photo

And often, the numbers back that up, such as a recent report that Read More

2016 International Santa Fe Folk Art Market Ends Today

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Today is the last day of the International Santa Fe Folk Art Market 2016. Los Alamos residents Patricia, Melina and Paulina Burnside are helping out as volunteers for the second year with interpretation for Mexican and Peruvian Artist. Photo by Nathan Burnside
 
ART News:

Over the past 13 years, the organization known as the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market has been providing opportunity to folk artists at the world’s largest market of its kind.

The organization has expanded programs to meet the specific challenges that folk artists are facing in the global marketplace. What

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Dawn Maps Ceres Craters Where Ice May Accumulate

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This artist’s concept shows NASA’s Dawn spacecraft heading toward the dwarf planet Ceres. Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech
 
NASA/JPL News:

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Scientists with NASA’s Dawn mission have identified permanently shadowed regions on the dwarf planet Ceres. Most of these areas likely have been cold enough to trap water ice for a billion years, suggesting that ice deposits could exist there now. The findings were published this week in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
 
“The conditions on Ceres
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Flipping Crystals Improves Solar-Cell Performance

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Three types of large-area solar cells made out of two-dimensional perovskites. At left, a room-temperature cast film; upper middle is a sample with the problematic band gap, and at right is the hot-cast sample with the best energy performance.  Image courtesy Los Alamos National Laboratory. Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

  • Perovskite research team spin-casts crystals for efficient and resilient optoelectronic devices

In a step that could bring perovskite crystals closer to use in the burgeoning solar power industry, researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Northwestern University Read More

Elie Wiesel And The Holocaust

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By Dr. T. DOUGLAS REILLY
Los Alamos

The death of Elie Wiesel (weasel in German) brings many stories of his life; his internment in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bürgenwald, his many books, and his insistence the world must never forget. I’ve been to Warsaw and seen the monument to the many Poles who died in concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau; it’s at the site of the bus station where Poles were herded onto buses that took them to the railroad station, where they were taken, like cattle, to the various camps. I’ve seen the monument a couple blocks away to the 7,500 or so Poles Read More

Bathtub Row Press Launches Doomed To Cooperate

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Former LANL Director Dr. Sig Hecker signing the book for LANL Director Dr. Charlie McMillan. Courtesy photo
 
HISTORICAL SOCIETY News:
 
Bathtub Row Press, the publishing house of the Los Alamos Historical Society, released this week Doomed to Cooperate: How American and Russian Scientists Joined Forces to Avert Some of the Greatest Post-Cold War Nuclear Dangers, a two-volume, 976-page series of essays edited by former laboratory director Siegfried Hecker.
 
The book tells the remarkable stories of nuclear scientists from two former enemy nations,
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Bee Deaths Threaten Summer Picnics And Barbecues

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No bees, no food conference. Courtesy photo
 
ENM News:
 
ALBUQUERQUE ― Chile, watermelon and juicy tomatoes are among the summer staples at risk if bee colonies continue to collapse at unprecedented rates, beekeeper Tyler Schutte and Environment New Mexico said at a conference Thursday..

Bees pollinate most of the world’s most common crops, including seasonal favorites such as peaches, asparagus, and cherries. But the U.S. is losing about a third of its bee colonies each year, alarming beekeepers, farmers and chefs along with environmental advocates. Environment

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Community Invited To Book Signing Of Doomed To Cooperate, Edited By Siegfried Hecker, 7 p.m. Today

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COMMUNITY News:

Bathtub Row Press announces the release of Doomed to Cooperate, edited by Siegfried Hecker.

The community is invited to attend the release celebration and book signing of this long-awaited title at 7 p.m., today in historic Fuller Lodge. 

“This is a task that never ends, and Sig Hecker, who has done more than any other American to strengthen US and Russian scientific cooperation, tells us how critical it is for this nuclear work to be revived today.”  — Sam Nunn, former US Senator and Co-Chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

The two-volume sets can be purchased Read More

Letter To The Editor: Brexit … Mourning Exit From EU

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By Dr. T. DOUGLAS REILLY
Los Alamos

I think I may wear black today (June 24) in mourning for the UK voting to leave the EU.

In early 1975, we left home in New Mexico to move to Italy. We took three months to get there, driving across the US, sailing on a Russian ship, Mikhail Lermontov, to La Hague, and then through France and northern Italy to Ispra. For almost 2.5 years, I worked in the Joint Research Centre of the European Communities (EURATOM).* 

In late 1978, we arrived back in Los Alamos after taking three months driving through Europe, mainly France; taking a ferry to England; Read More