World

LANL: New Mars Rover Findings Revealed at American Geophysical Union Conference

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View from Marias Pass in Gale crater, Mars, where scientists found high concentrations of silica in the light toned bedrock seen in the lower half of the image. The Buckskin drill hole where the mineral tridymite was detected is visible in the lower left part of the image. Mount Sharp (Aolis Mons), the mountain in the center of Gale Crater is seen in the background, and the right front wheel of the Curiosity rover is seen to the right in the image. The image is made up of a number of smaller images by Curiosity’s arm-mounted camera. Courtesy/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

LANL News:

  • Much higher concentrations
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LANL’s New Model More Accurately Tracks Gases For Underground Nuclear Explosion Detection

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This model sequentially couples a hydrodynamic rock damage code to a gas transport simulator via a translation between damage results and hydrogeologic parameters and stochastic sampling for uncertain hydrogeologic parameters. Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a new, more thorough method for detecting underground nuclear explosions (UNEs) by coupling two fundamental elements—seismic models with gas-flow models—to create a more complete picture of how an explosion’s evidence (radionuclide gases) seep to the surface.

Their Read More

LANL’s Portable MRI Named Top 10 Breakthrough Of 2015 By Physics World Magazine

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Michelle Espy, project leader at LANL, in front of the battlefield MRI, which uses ultra-low-field magnetic resonance imaging to create images of injured soft tissues, such as the brain. Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

  • Innovative technology could be deployed to battlefields and hospitals in developing countries

Los Alamos National Laboratory’s portable MRI was named one of the Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year by Physics World, the member magazine of the Institute of Physics. Portable MRI, also called Battlefield MRI (bMRI), uses ultra-low-field magnetic resonance imaging to create images Read More

Reporters Without Borders Releases Annual Worldwide List Of Journalists Held Hostage, Imprisoned Or Missing

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RSF News:

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has published its annual worldwide list of journalists held hostage, imprisoned or missing. Every year, some 500 journalists are arrested, 1,000 assaulted or threatened, and more than 500 media outlets censored.

According to RSF’s tally, 54 professional journalists are being held hostage worldwide, a 35 percent increase from last year. It is no surprise that Syria is the country where non-state groups are holding the biggest number of journalists – 26. Islamic State alone is holding 18, mainly in Syria and Iraq.

“A full-blown hostage industry has Read More

New $7 Million XPRIZE Competition Announced

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XPRIZE News:
 
SAN FRANCISCO — At a keynote address today during the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of XPRIZE, announced the launch of the $7M Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, a three-year global competition challenging teams to advance ocean technologies for rapid and unmanned ocean exploration.
 
As part of the total $7 million prize purse, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is offering a $1M bonus prize to teams that demonstrate their technology can “sniff out” a specified
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Moniz On Conclusion Of COP21 Climate Negotiations

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U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz

DOE News:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz released the following statement Saturday regarding the conclusion of the COP21 climate change negotiations:

“This agreement shows that the world is ready to move towards an innovative era of reductions in heat-trapping emissions that will put us on a path to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. President Obama, Secretary Kerry, and the entire U.S. negotiating team showed leadership, not just at these talks in Paris, but for the months and years of groundwork that was Read More

MOWW Presents Highest Honor To LANL Director

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Commander LTC Gregg Giesler, right, presents LANL Director Dr. Charles F. McMillan with the MOWW’s highest honor during a gathering Sunday at the Los Alamos Research Park. Photo by Carol A. Clark/ladailypost.com

 
By CAROL A. CLARK
Los Alamos Daily Post
 
On behalf of the Military Order of World Wars, Commander LTC Gregg Giesler presented the prestigious Silver Patrick Henry Medallion to Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Dr. Charles F. McMillan. The Silver Patrick Henry Medallion is the highest honor given by the MOWW.
 
“We presented the Silver Patrick Henry
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Ceres’ Bright Spots Likely Brine Deposits

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This image, made using images taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, shows Occator crater on Ceres, home to a collection of intriguing bright spots. The bright spots are much brighter than the rest of Ceres’ surface, and tend to appear overexposed in most images. This view is a composite of two images of Occator: one using a short exposure that captures the detail in the bright spots, and one where the background surface is captured at normal exposure. The images were obtained by Dawn during the mission’s High Altitude Mapping Orbit (HAMO) phase, from which the spacecraft imaged Read More

LANL’s Science In 60 seconds: The Hunt For Antarctic Meteorites

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LANL scientist Nina Lanza has signed up to spend nearly six weeks in a tent on the Antarctic ice sheet. ScreenShot/LANL

LANL News:

She’s the “coolest” thing in science, searching the ice sheets of Antarctica for meteorites from outer space.

Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Nina Lanza has signed up to spend nearly six weeks in a tent on the Antarctic ice sheet. Why would anyone do such a thing? For science, obviously!

In the premiere episode of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s “Science in 60” video series, Lanza gives us the low-down in 60 seconds on the why and how of hunting meteorites on Read More

Roger This: All Aboard For The Paris Accord

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By ROGER SNODGRASS
Los Alamos Daily Post

The first week of the 21st meeting of the of the Conference of Parties (COP21) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is drawing to a close in Paris.

During this time the Earth has theoretically warmed an additional .0008degreesFahrenheit. That calculation is according to my own back-of-the-envelope extrapolation of a very broad scientific consensus that we are approaching a warming rate of about .04 degrees F per decade.

The alarming problem about these miniscule estimates is that we are beginning to cross a red line Read More