TWO VIEWS OF CERES

FROM:  NASA 

These two views of Ceres were acquired by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on Feb. 12, 2015, from a distance of about 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) as the dwarf planet rotated. The images have been magnified from their original size. The Dawn spacecraft is due to arrive at Ceres on March 6, 2015. Dawn's mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., of Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The framing cameras were provided by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen, Germany, with significant contributions by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer was provided by the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, built by Selex ES, and is managed and operated by the Italian Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology, Rome. The gamma ray and neutron detector was built by Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, and is operated by the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.

SCIENTIST SENTENCED TO PRISON FOR ATOMIC ENERGY ACT VIOLATIONS

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT 
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Former Los Alamos National Laboratory Scientist Sentenced to Prison for Atomic Energy Act Violations

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John P. Carlin, U.S. Attorney Damon P. Martinez for the District of New Mexico, Assistant Director Randall C. Coleman of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division and Special Agent in Charge Carol K.O. Lee of the FBI’s Albuquerque Division announced that Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, a scientist formerly employed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), was sentenced this morning for Atomic Energy Act and other violations relating to his communication of classified nuclear weapons data to a person he believed to be a Venezuelan government official.

Mascheroni, 79, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Argentina, was sentenced in Albuquerque, New Mexico, by U.S. District Judge William P. Johnson to 60 months in federal prison followed by the three years of supervised release.  His wife, Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, 71, previously was sentenced in August 2014 to a year and a day of imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release for her conviction on conspiracy and false statement charges.

“The public trusts that the government will do all it can to safeguard Restricted Data from being unlawfully transmitted to foreign nations not entitled to receive it,” said Assistant Attorney General Carlin.  “We simply cannot allow people to violate their pledge to protect the classified nuclear weapons data with which they are entrusted.  Today’s sentencing should leave no doubt that counterespionage investigations remain one of our most powerful tools to protect our national security.  I thank the many people who worked to bring these convictions to fruition.”

“Our laws are designed to prevent ‘Restricted Data’ from falling into the wrong hands because of the potential harm to our national security,” said U.S. Attorney Martinez.  “Those who work at our country’s national laboratories are charged with safeguarding that sensitive information, and we must and will vigorously prosecute anyone who compromises our nation’s nuclear secrets for profit.  I commend the many agents, analysts and prosecutors who worked tirelessly to bring about the convictions in this case.  I also thank the Los Alamos National Laboratory for cooperating fully in the investigation and prosecution of this case.”

“This case demonstrates the consequences that result when those charged with protecting our nation’s secrets violate the trust placed in them by the American people,” said Assistant Director Coleman.  “Safeguarding classified material is vital to the public interest, and the FBI will continue to hold accountable those who knowingly and willfully threaten the national security of the United States through the unauthorized disclosure of protected information.”

“America trusts those who work with our country's classified information to keep it away from those who would harm us.  Anyone who betrays that trust for his own gain puts our nation's security up for auction, and the price for us all could be very high indeed,” said Special Agent in Charge Lee.  “Since World War II, the FBI has worked tirelessly to protect U.S. nuclear weapons data, and we are proud of our investigation in this case.”

Mascheroni, a Ph.D. physicist, worked as a scientist at LANL from 1979 to 1988 and held a security clearance that allowed him access to certain classified information, including “Restricted Data.”  Roxby Mascheroni worked at LANL between 1981 and 2010, where her duties included technical writing and editing.  She also held a security clearance at LANL that allowed her access to certain classified information, including “Restricted Data.”  As defined under the Atomic Energy Act, “Restricted Data” is classified information concerning the design, manufacture or use of atomic weapons; the production of special nuclear material; or the use of special nuclear material in the production of energy.

Mascheroni and Roxby Mascheroni were indicted in September 2010 and charged with conspiracy to communicate and communicating Restricted Data to an individual with the intent to secure an advantage to a foreign nation, as well as conspiracy to convey and conveying classified information.  The indictment also charged Mascheroni with concealing and retaining U.S. records with the intent to convert them to his own use and gain, and both defendants with making false statements.

Mascheroni pleaded guilty in June 2013, to counts seven and eight of the indictment, charging him with conversion of government property and retention of U.S. records, and counts 10 through 15, charging him with making false statements.  Mascheroni also pleaded guilty to a felony information charging him with two counts of communication of Restricted Data and one count of retention of national defense information.

In entering his guilty plea, Mascheroni admitted that in November 2008 and July 2009, he unlawfully communicated Restricted Data to another individual with reason to believe that the data would be utilized to secure an advantage to Venezuela.  He also admitted unlawfully converting Department of Energy information to his own use and selling the information in November 2008 and July 2009, and failing to deliver classified information relating to the United States’ national defense to appropriate authorities and instead unlawfully retaining the information in his home.  Finally, Mascheroni admitted making materially false statements to the FBI when he was interviewed in October 2009.

Roxby Mascheroni pleaded guilty in June 2014, to count six of the indictment, charging her with conspiracy, and counts 16 through 22, charging her with making false statements.  She also pleaded guilty to a felony information charging her with conspiracy to communicate Restricted Data.  Roxby Mascheroni admitted that between October 2007 and October 2009, she conspired with Mascheroni to convey Restricted Data belonging to the United States to another person with reason to believe that the information would be used to secure an advantage to Venezuela.  She also admitted making materially false statements to the FBI when she was interviewed in October 2009.

The indictment in this case did not allege that the government of Venezuela or anyone acting on its behalf sought or was passed any classified information, nor did it charge any Venezuelan government officials or anyone acting on their behalf with wrongdoing.  The indictment also did not allege any wrongdoing by other individuals working at LANL.

This investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Albuquerque Division with assistance from the Department of Energy and LANL.  The prosecution was handled by Senior Counsel Kathleen Kedian and Trial Attorney David Recker of the Counterespionage Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Fred J. Federici, Dean Tuckman and Holland S. Kastrin of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico.

LANL ON USE OF QUANTUM DOTS TO IMPROVE SOLAR CELLS

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Nontoxic Quantum Dot Research Improves Solar Cells

Record power-conversion efficiency at Los Alamos from quantum-dot sensitized photovoltaics

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Dec. 10, 2013—Solar cells made with low-cost, non-toxic copper-based quantum dots can achieve unprecedented longevity and efficiency, according to a study by Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sharp Corporation.

“For the first time, we have certified the performance of a quantum dot sensitized solar cell at greater than 5 percent, which is among the highest reported for any quantum dot solar cell,” said Hunter McDaniel, a Los Alamos postdoctoral researcher and the lead author on a paper appearing in Nature Communications this week. “The robust nature of these devices opens up the possibility for commercialization of this emerging low-cost and low-toxicity photovoltaic technology,” he noted.

The reported solar cells are based on a new generation of nontoxic quantum dots (not containing either lead or cadmium as do most quantum dots used in solar cells). These dots are based on copper indium selenide sulfide and are rigorously optimized to reduce charge-carrier losses from surface defects and to provide the most complete coverage of the solar spectrum.

“The new solar cells were certified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and demonstrated a record power-conversion efficiency for this type of devices,” according to Victor Klimov of Los Alamos, director of the Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics a DOE Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC). In addition to CASP-EFRC, this research has been also supported via a cooperative research agreement with Sharp Corporation.

The paper, “An integrated approach to realizing high-performance liquid-junction quantum dot sensitized solar cells” is scheduled for online publication in Nature Communications on Dec. 10, 2013.

The paper's authors are Hunter McDaniel, Nikolay S. Makarov, Jeffrey M. Pietryga, and Victor I. Klimov of the Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics, Los Alamos National Laboratory, in partnership with Nobuhiro Fuke of the Materials & Energy Technology Laboratory, Sharp Corporation, Japan.

CHEMCAM EXCEEDS 100.000 SHOTS ON MARS

Curiosity Heads To Mars.  Credit:  NASA

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos’s ChemCam team fills scrapbook from Mars road trip

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Dec. 5, 2013—The ChemCam laser instrument aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover fired its 100,000th shot recently, chronicling its adventures on Mars with a coffee-table-book’s worth of spectral data that might rival snapshots gathered during a long and satisfying family vacation here on Earth. ChemCam zaps rocks with a high-powered laser to determine their composition and carries a camera that can survey the Martian landscape.

“ChemCam has greatly exceeded our expectations,” said Roger Wiens, Los Alamos National Laboratory planetary scientist and Principal Investigator of the ChemCam Team. “The information we’ve gleaned from the instrument will continue to enhance our understanding of the Red Planet, and will nicely complement information from the other nine instruments aboard Curiosity as we continue our odyssey to Mount Sharp.”

Curiosity landed on Mars at the edge of Gale Crater near the base of Mount Sharp on Aug. 6, 2012. The rover is a rolling laboratory about the size of a small SUV that will roam the Martian landscape for at least another year in search of clues about the planet’s habitability. Using a suite of 10 instruments that can perform diverse and amazing tasks ranging from digging up and baking soil samples, to shooting rocks with pinpoint accuracy with a high-powered laser, Curiosity already has helped show scientists that Mars apparently once had a very wet history and still retains enough moisture in its dust and rocks to quench the thirst of future astronauts.

Curiosity’s laser instrument, ChemCam, fires a short laser burst that packs the wallop of nearly one million light bulbs into a single pinpoint of light to vaporize rock and dust. A camera aboard the instrument reads the spectral signature of the resultant flash and translates the information into the composition of whatever happened to be in ChemCam’s crosshairs at the moment. The instrument also has a camera that scientists have been using to survey the Martian landscape.

The ChemCam concept was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, but the instrument aboard Curiosity is a partnership between Los Alamos and the French national space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and research agency, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

The U.S. operations center for the ChemCam team is located in downtown Los Alamos. Wiens said a teleprompter showing the latest slideshows from Mars will soon be erected in downtown Los Alamos for public viewing.

“Like those family slideshows from summer vacations along Route 66, people will be able to enjoy and experience the highlights of our trip,” Wiens said. “ChemCam was designed to fire one million shots, so we’ll have lots of stories to tell later on.”

LANL RESEARCHERS STUDY HIV VIRUS SPREAD WITH COMPUTER MODELING

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
HIV Virus Spread and Evolution Studied Through Computer Modeling

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., November 19, 2013—Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory are investigating the complex relationships between the spread of the HIV virus in a population (epidemiology) and the actual, rapid evolution of the virus (phylogenetics) within each patient’s body.

“We have developed novel ways of estimating epidemics dynamics such as who infected whom, and the true population incidence of infection versus mere diagnoses dates,” said Thomas Leitner, principal investigator. “Obviously, knowledge about these things is important for public health monitoring, decision making and intervention campaigns, and further to forensic investigations.”

The team models the uninfected population using traditional differential equations on the computer; this is done for computational speed, because an agent-based component is much more demanding. Once a person is infected, he/she becomes an “agent” in computer modeling terms, and the model starts following their behavior individually, as well as the viral HIV evolution within the person.

Agent-based Modeling Clarifies Infection History

This new modeling approach distinguishes between susceptible and infected individuals to capture the full infection history, including contact tracing data for infected individuals. The uninfected individuals are modeled at a population level and stratified by transmission risk and social group. The social network in this model forms – and can change – during the simulation. Thus, the model is much more realistic than traditional models.

The advantage of this epidemiological model, Leitner said, is that “it allows us to simulate many possible outcomes of epidemics with known parameters of human interactions, where social networks form as part of the agent interactions. It is a flexible system that has the ability to describe realistic human populations.”

Within a National Institutes of Health-supported project “Reconstructing HIV Epidemics from HIV Phylogenetics,” the team has published 10 papers describing new mathematical models and results from real data addressing these issues. Most recently, they published a Nature correspondence on the limitations of HIV forensics and the need for better standards.

Who Infected Whom

A key question is on the fundamental limitations to the inference of who infected whom, based on a concept known as the pre-transmission interval (which this group first described back in 1999). Another publication, published in Epidemics, developed a new hybrid model to simulate and analyze the spread of HIV or other pathogens spread in a human population. The work also appeared in PLoS-ONE Public Library of Science online publication.

As an example, the team modeled a Latvian HIV-1 epidemic, and they showed that injecting drug users fueled the heterosexual population, thereby sustaining the overall epidemic. The researchers are now expanding this hybrid model to also include HIV genetic evolution, which occurs in every infected individual.

The researchers have shown that in fast HIV epidemics – such as among individuals injecting themselves with drugs – HIV viral evolution is slow, resulting in little diversification at the population level. Meanwhile, slower-spreading epidemics display more HIV evolution over the same amount of time.

New Field of Phylodynamics Evolves

Understanding HIV’s genetic evolution will soon allow investigations of how accurately researchers can reconstruct different epidemiological scenarios using pathogen genetic materials, an important and growing field called phylodynamics.

The team also has developed a new mathematical model that facilitates estimation of when a person was infected with HIV based on a previously used biomarker (BED IgG).

“This is important because most HIV infected persons are not discovered shortly after infection rather, they are often discovered long after, often years after infection, said Leitner. “Thus, to estimate true incidence, that is when infections actually occurred, cannot be done based on diagnosis dates.”

Using Swedish surveillance data, the team has shown that the common assumption that infection occurred on average half way between last negative test and first positive test, is wrong. Instead, the actual infection is strongly skewed towards the first positive sample.

This finding should have large impact on epidemiological models used worldwide by public health organizations, Leitner says. “Currently, we have further developed this model to also correct for unknown cases, such as infected people not yet discovered but who contribute to new infections and thereby the true incidence of the disease.”

The Team Behind the Insights

Researchers include Frederik Graw, Thomas Leitner, Ruy M. Ribeiro, and Helena Skar (Los Alamos National Laboratory) and Jan Albert (Karolinska Institute and Karolinska University Hospital). The National Institutes of Health funded the research.

LANL SAYS HIV VACCINE SHOWS PROMISE IN MONKEYS

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY 
New Global HIV Vaccine Design Shows Promise in Monkeys
Preclinical study provides strong rationale for clinical trials

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., October 30, 2013—The considerable diversity of HIV worldwide represents a critical challenge for designing an effective HIV vaccine. Now, it appears that that a vaccine bioinformatically optimized for immunologic coverage of global HIV diversity, called a mosaic vaccine and designed by Bette Korber and her team at Los Alamos National Laboratory, may confer protection from infection.

“This is the first time the mosaic antigen inserts were used in a challenge study. In a challenge study, vaccine-elicited protection from infection is tested, versus testing a vaccine for its ability to stimulate good immune responses,” says Bette Korber of Los Alamos.

These vaccines are specifically designed to present the most common forms of parts of the virus that can be recognized by the immune system. This new insight regarding a mosaic vaccine’s ability to protect from infection is the result of work by a scientific team led by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), and including Los Alamos researchers. The study, which was conducted in monkeys, is newly published in the journal Cell.

“To our knowledge, this study represents the first evaluation of the protective efficacy of a candidate global HIV antigen strategy in nonhuman primates,” says lead author Dan H. Barouch, MD, PhD, the director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at BIDMC and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “In this study, we show for the first time that bioinformatically optimized HIV vaccine antigens can afford partial protection in rhesus monkeys against challenges with a stringent simian-human immunodeficiency virus.”

Key defense against HIV infection studied

Barouch and his team studied the immunogenicity of HIV mosaic Env/Gag/Pol antigens administered to monkeys using viral vectors. (Env, Gag, and Pol are three major HIV proteins that help viruses “bind to” or enter host cells and infect them.) Mosaic proteins resemble these natural proteins, therefore increasing efficacy against the HIV diversity. After immunization, the monkeys were repetitively exposed to a simian-human immunodeficiency virus that carried the human Env (envelope, or binding) protein, and the investigators evaluated the ability of the vaccines to block infection by repeatedly exposing the vaccinated animals to the virus.

Although most animals immunized with the mosaic HIV vaccine became infected by the end of the study, the researchers observed an 87 to 90 percent reduction in monkeys’ probability of becoming infected each time they were exposed to the virus. In contrast, monkeys that received sham vaccines became infected quickly.

“These findings indicate that these optimized vaccine antigens can afford partial protection in a stringent animal model,” says Barouch.

The investigators found that the immunized monkeys mounted antibody responses against diverse strains of HIV noting, “Protection was dependent on several different types of antibody responses, suggesting that the coordinated activity of multiple antibody functions may contribute to protection against difficult-to-neutralize viruses.” The monkeys also mounted cellular immune responses to multiple regions of the virus.

Highly infective virus presents challenge

The researchers note that most previous HIV vaccine candidates have typically only been tested for protection against easy-to-neutralize viruses rather than against a difficult-to-neutralize virus like the one used in this study. Also, the viral challenge in the study was approximately 100-fold more infectious than typical sexual HIV exposures in humans.

“These data suggest a path forward for the development of a global HIV vaccine and give us hope that such a vaccine might indeed be possible,” said Barouch. “We are planning to advance this HIV vaccine candidate into clinical trials next year,” he adds.

The research team

Study coauthors include BIDMC investigators Kathryn E. Stephenson, Erica N. Borducchi, Kaitlin Smith, Kelly Stanley, Anna G. McNally, Jinyan Liu, Peter Abbink, Lori F. Maxfield and Michael S. Seaman. Other team members include Anne-Sophie Dugast, Galit Alter, Melissa Ferguson, Wenjun Li, Patricia L. Earl, Bernard Moss, Elena E. Giorgi, James J. Szinger, Leigh Anne Eller, Erik A. Billings, Mangala Rao, Sodsai Tovanabutra, Eric Sanders-Buell, Mo Weijtens, Maria G. Pau, Hanneke Schuitemaker, Merlin L. Robb, Jerome H. Kim, Bette T. Korber and Nelson L. Michael.

This work was supported by the U.S. Military Research and Material Command and the U.S. Military HIV Research Program; the National Institutes of Health; the NIAID Division of Intramural Research; the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard; and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

About Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School and currently ranks third in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is clinically affiliated with the Joslin Diabetes Center and is a research partner of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox.

LOS ALAMOS CELEBRATES 50 YEARS SINCE LAUNCH OF 'WATCHMEN'

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
A Golden Anniversary for Space-Based Treaty Verification
Los Alamos celebrates 50-year anniversary of launch of first pair of ‘Watchmen’

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Oct. 22, 2013—Fifty years ago this month, Los Alamos National Laboratory sensor technology lifted off into space to help verify that world Superpowers were abiding by the newly signed Limited Test Ban Treaty—a pledge by the United States, the former Soviet Union and the United Kingdom to refrain from testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater or in space.

“For the past 70 years, Los Alamos National Laboratory has serviced the country and provided technical solutions to the some of biggest national security challenges facing the nation,” said Terry Wallace, Principal Associate Director for Global Security at Los Alamos. “On October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik, an event that changed the world. Space became a national-security concern; Los Alamos played the key role in providing a space platform to monitor nuclear weapons testing and treaties, and 50 years later the lab still has this role.

“As we celebrate our golden anniversary of space-based treaty verification, we remember not only our successes in our mission, but also how this mission has enabled scientific discovery,” Wallace said. “Without a focus on national security, we could not continue to produce cutting-edge science; without our commitment to scientific excellence, we could not succeed in our mission. It is this synergy that makes Los Alamos a truly unique national treasure.”

The first pair of Vela satellites launched on Oct. 17, 1963, just one week after the three nations had signed the historic treaty, and barely a year after the U.S. and Soviet Union had faced an extremely tense nuclear standoff during the Cuban Missile Crisis. With the launch of Vela—an abbreviated version of Velador, a colloquial New Mexican word for “night watchman”—a dangerous era of accelerated atmospheric and space-based nuclear weapons testing by the U.S. and Soviet Union subsided, thanks to collaboration between Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories. One year later, China detonated its first nuclear weapon, underscoring the need for enhanced vigilance in a rapidly changing world.

The success of the Vela program marked the beginning of an enduring space-based treaty verification system that continues to enhance security for America and the rest of the world. Vela’s sensors focused on basic detection of electromagnetic- and energetic-particle emissions associated with open nuclear weapons detonations. But they also enabled serendipitous discoveries of remarkable natural phenomena such as cosmic gamma-ray bursts, X-ray novae and solar wind composition. Modern space-based verification systems rely on sophisticated sensors that have not only helped keep the peace, but also continue to help explain the origins of poorly understood natural events such as terrestrial lightning.

During the past 50 years, some 200 space vehicles have been launched with Los Alamos payloads aboard. Many of these support on-going treaty-monitoring missions, while others are experiments designed to push the boundaries of what is considered state-of-the-art. Notable Los Alamos experimental missions include:

 ALEXIS, the Array of Low-Energy X-ray Imaging Sensors, was Los Alamos’s first homemade satellite. Launched in April 1993, this small craft demonstrated and tested new X-ray and radio sensing technology. The satellite was controlled from inside a small room at the Laboratory and remains aloft today.

 The FORTÉ, Fast On-orbit Rapid Recording of Transient Events, satellite, launched in August 1997, was a satellite test-bed for nuclear-detonation-detection technologies. Weighing less than 100 pounds and built of graphite-reinforced epoxy (the first of its kind to go into space), the small, long craft was essentially an antenna attached to a capsule-shaped array of solar panels, giving the satellite a distinctive fish-skeleton appearance. The satellite was lauded by Discovery magazine as one of most innovative advancements in aerospace technology, and it explored a 30-year problem of discriminating between electro-magnetic pulses (EMPs) caused by nuclear explosions and those caused by other natural or manmade sources.

 The Cibola Flight Experiment, launched in March 2007, tested eight new technologies—among them whether a specially designed supercomputer could survive the rigors of space. Because spacecraft are constantly bombarded by high-energy particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic field, computers and computer equipment can fail in the harsh environment. Moreover, high-powered computing requires a lot of energy, yet space travel requires low weight and small packages. Cibola’s supercomputer is testing new power sources and new strategies for hardening crucial computer components as well as new treaty verification technologies.

 In December 2010 Los Alamos scientists launched four satellites known as “cubeSats,” each of which is tiny enough to be held in a human hand. These unique craft, part of the Perseus Program, demonstrated the ability to quickly build and launch a useful, low-cost satellite. They also helped validate a Los Alamos design methodology of using simple, off-the-shelf components to accomplish a specific mission. The tiny spacecraft showcased communication- and data-collection capabilities, as well as a major new space capability for the Laboratory.
In addition to these missions, Los Alamos space technology deployed on scientific satellites has helped scientists worldwide determine the elemental composition of the surface of the moon, including the presence of water; understand the structure and dynamics of the Van Allen radiation belts; characterize the moons of Saturn; study the origin of gamma ray bursts and supernovae; and, most recently, with key instruments aboard the Curiosity Rover, help characterize the Martian landscape.

“The capabilities and technologies we have developed and demonstrated in support of our treaty verification mission have also found wide application in basic space research, enabled our participation in multiple NASA projects and led to a number of important discoveries,” said Kevin Saeger, leader of Los Alamos’s Intelligence and Space Research Division. “It’s a source of great pride to ISR Division employees to be able to support national security and at the same time participate in the human quest for greater knowledge and understanding of the universe.”

An exhibit that includes highlights of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s 50 years of space-based treaty verification, starting with Vela, is on display at U.S. Department of Energy Headquarters in Washington, D.C. The exhibit will next go to the U.S. Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, and later to Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, key partners in the national program for space-based nuclear detonation detection.

WATER WORLD MARS

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Water for Future Mars Astronauts?

Diversity of Martian soils leaves Los Alamos scientists thirsty for more

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Sept. 26, 2013—Within its first three months on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity Rover saw a surprising diversity of soils and sediments along a half-kilometer route that tell a complex story about the gradual desiccation of the Red Planet.

Perhaps most notable among findings from the ChemCam team is that all of the dust and fine soil contains small amounts of water.

“We made this discovery literally with the very first laser shot on the Red Planet,” said Roger Wiens, leader of the ChemCam instrument team. “Every single time we shot at dust we saw a significant hydrogen peak.”

In a series of five papers covering the rover’s top discoveries during its first three months on Mars that appear today in the journal Science, Los Alamos researchers using the rover’s ChemCam instrument team up with an international cadre of scientists affiliated with the CheMin, APXS, and SAM instruments to describe the planet’s seemingly once-volcanic and aquatic history.

Researchers believed the hydrogen seen in the dust was coming from water, a hypothesis that was later corroborated by Curiosity’s SAM instrument, which indicated that all of the soil encountered on Mars contains between 1.5 and 3 percent water. This quantity is enough to explain much of the near-equatorial hydrogen observed beginning in 2001 by Los Alamos’s neutron spectrometer on board the Mars Odyssey spacecraft.

ChemCam also showed that the soils consist of two distinct components. In addition to extremely fine-grained particles that seem to be representative of the ubiquitous Martian dust covering the entire planet’s surface like the fine film that collects on the undisturbed surfaces of a long-abandoned home, the ChemCam team discovered coarser-grained particles up to one millimeter in size that reflected the composition of local rocks. In essence, ChemCam observed the process of rocks being ground down to soil over time.

The ChemCam instrument—which vaporizes material with a high-powered laser and reads the resultant plasma with a spectrometer—has shown a similar composition to fine-grained dust characterized on other parts of the planet during previous Martian missions. ChemCam tested more than 100 targets in a location named Rocknest and found that the dust contained consistent amounts of water regardless of the sampling area.

What’s more, the Rover dug into the soils at Rocknest to provide scientists with the opportunity to sample the newly unearthed portion over the course of several Martian days. The instrument measured roughly the same tiny concentration of water (about 2 percent) in the surface soils as it did in the freshly uncovered soil, and the newly excavated area did not dry out over time—as would be expected if moist subsurface material were uncovered.

The water signature seen by Curiosity in the ubiquitous Martian dust may coincide with the tiny amount of ambient humidity in the planet’s arid atmosphere. Multiple observations indicate that the flowing water responsible for shaping and moving the rounded pebbles encountered in the vicinity of the rover landing area has long since been lost to space, though some of it may still exist deep below the surface of the planet at equatorial locations (water ice is known to exist near the surface at the poles).

Despite the seemingly small measurements of water in the Martian environment, the findings nevertheless are exciting.

“In principle it would be possible for future astronauts to heat the soil to derive water to sustain them,” said Wiens.

While at Rocknest, scientists were also able to test samples that had been characterized by ChemCam with two other instruments aboard the rover: CheMin, a miniaturized apparatus partially developed at Los Alamos that uses X-rays to determine the composition of materials; and SAM, a tiny oven that melts samples and identifies the composition of gases given off by them. The analyses by all three instruments indicate that Mars likely has a volcanic history that shaped the surface of the planet.

A fourth instrument, the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS), provides additional insights into the volcanic diversity on Mars. APXS analyzed a rock called Jake Matijevic—named in honor of a deceased Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars engineer—and found that it is one of the most Earth-like rocks yet seen on the Red Planet. The rock’s enrichment in sodium, giving it a feldspar-rich mineral content, makes it very similar to some rocks erupted on ocean islands on Earth. ChemCam contributed to the characterization of Jake_M.

The Curiosity Rover is scheduled to explore Mars for another year at least. In the coming months, Curiosity will travel to Mount Sharp, a towering peak nearly three miles in elevation. Mount Sharp appears to contain layers of sedimentary history dating back several billion years. These layers are like pages of a book that could teach researchers much about the geologic and climate history of the Red Planet.

LANL GIVES RELIABILITY TECHNOLOGY AWARD

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Reliability Technology earns prestigious Los Alamos award

Technology transferred to Procter & Gamble basis for first-ever Feynman Prize

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Aug. 27, 2013—Los Alamos National Laboratory has honored Michael Hamada, Harold Martz and a team of LANL researchers with its first Richard Feynman Prize for Innovation Achievement for the team’s long and successful collaboration with Procter & Gamble.

Hamada, Martz and their colleagues worked with Procter & Gamble for years developing a concept known as Reliability Technology—a statistical method that P&G has used to streamline its manufacturing processes and save more than a billion dollars a year in costs by increasing uptime in their plants worldwide.

“Now that the Reliability Technology system has been fully developed by Procter & Gamble, they are bringing the system back to Los Alamos to help us improve our manufacturing operations related to our national security mission,” said Terry Wallace, Principal Associate Director for Global Security at Los Alamos, who awarded the Feynman Prize to Martz and Hamada. “This is an example of ‘full-cycle’ innovation: We bring mission-essential tools to bear on an important complementary problem for industry; it helps us perform our primary mission job, and the innovation comes back to help the Laboratory in another area.”

The team was honored last week during the Laboratory’s 15th-annual outStanding innOvation Awards Reception—an event honoring Laboratory staff members who contribute to the development and transfer of LANL technology for commercialization. Other Los Alamos members of the Reliability Technology team are: Joanne Wendelberger, Ben Sims, Dave Higdon, Brian Williams, Christine Anderson-Cook, Earl Lawrence, Brian Weaver, Leslie Moore, and Richard Picard.

“Los Alamos has a long history of providing solutions to some of our nation's most challenging problems,” said Wallace. “Turning science and engineering into solutions is ‘innovation’ in the truest sense of the word, and the Technology Transfer awards are a celebration of our scientists' and engineers' creativity and success in making a difference, not only to our national security mission, but to society as well.”

The Feynman Prize is named after the iconic physicist who came to Los Alamos during the Manhattan project. Feynman was one of the Laboratory’s first patent holders and Wallace noted that Feynman is also regarded as one of the greatest science communicators of the 20th Century.

“Once a scientific concept is successfully translated into something that can be widely used, understood and accepted, it suddenly becomes something extraordinary,” Wallace said. “Therefore, the Feynman connection is highly relevant to the concept of true innovation.”

“Harry and I are deeply honored to have received the first Richard Feynman Prize for Innovation Achievement,” Hamada said. “We are delighted that LANL provides a work environment that encourages innovation and collaboration. We especially wish to thank our LANL and Procter & Gamble colleagues and management who made this work possible.”

This year’s outStanding innOvation Awards Reception included a keynote speech by Pete Tseronis, Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Department of Energy. Tseronis was introduced by Duncan McBranch, who is Los Alamos’ CTO. McBranch spoke about the role that innovation and technology transfer play in improving the quality and security of the outside world.

Los Alamos National Security LLC, sponsored the celebration, which was held at the Pajarito Mountain ski lodge.

NEW GAMMA-RAY OBSERVATORY HAS BEGUN THE STUDY OF THE ENERGETIC UNIVERSE

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY 
New Gamma-Ray Observatory Begins Operations at Sierra Negra Volcano In The State Of Puebla, Mexico

New Site to Observe Supernovas and Supermassive Black Holes

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., August 21, 2013—The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma Ray Observatory has begun formal operations at its site in Mexico. HAWC is designed to study the origin of very high-energy cosmic rays and observe the most energetic objects in the known universe. This extraordinary observatory, using a unique detection technique that differs from the classical astronomical design of mirrors, lenses, and antennae, is a significant boost to international scientific and technical knowledge.

“The HAWC observatory will search for signals from dark matter and to study some of the most extreme objects in the universe, such as supermassive black holes and exploding stars,” said Brenda Dingus, principal investigator and a research fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dingus is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and in 2000 was a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

HAWC is located at an altitude of 4100 meters on the slope of the volcanoes Sierra Negra and Pico de Orizaba at the border between the states of Puebla and Veracruz. The observatory, which is still under construction, uses an array of Cherenkov detectors to observe high-energy cosmic rays and gamma rays. Currently 100 out of 300 Cherenkov detectors are deployed and taking data. Each Cherenkov detector consists of 180,000 liters of extra-pure water stored inside an enormous tank (5 meters high and 7.3 meters in diameter) with four highly sensitive light sensors fixed to the bottom of the tank.

“Los Alamos has a long history of working in this field and built the predecessor to the HAWC observatory, called Milagro, located at the Los Alamos site in New Mexico,” Dingus said.

HAWC 15 Times More Sensitive Than Predecessor

“HAWC will be more than 15 times more sensitive than Milagro was, and it will detect many new sources of high-energy photons. Los Alamos also studies these high-energy phenomena through complex computer simulations to understand the physical mechanisms that accelerate particles to energies millions of times greater than man-made accelerators,” Dingus said.

The construction and operation of HAWC has been made possible by the financial support of several Mexican institutions such as the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and the Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE). Funding has also been provided by the United States through the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and the University of Maryland. The University of Maryland is the managing institute of the project overall.

The HAWC array, operating with 100 Cherenkov detectors since August 1 and growing each week, will be sensitive to high-energy particles and radiation between 100 GeV and 100 TeV, energy equivalent to a billion times the energy of visible light. For more information online see http://www.hawc-observatory.org/.

In 2009, HAWC was identified as the Mexican astronomical project with the highest expected impact on high-energy astrophysics. Shortly thereafter a test array with three Cherenkov detectors was installed at the volcano Sierra Negra and successfully observed cosmic rays and gamma rays. Following these early tests, a prototype array of seven Cherenkov detectors was built in 2009 to test the tank design, simulate real data-taking, and study the logistics of deploying a large-scale observatory in this remote location. In 2012, the first 30 of 300 HAWC detectors were deployed, and since that time have been operated nearly continuously. The 30-detector stage of HAWC permitted calibration of the observatory via the observation of the shadow of the moon as it blocked cosmic rays. (http://1.usa.gov/14jjT8w)

Today, the scientific team of HAWC will formally begin observations of the most violent phenomena in the known universe, such as supernovae explosions and the evolution of supermassive black holes.

Image captions:

Figure 1: Artist’s conception of a black hole in the center of a distant galaxy emitting gamma rays, one of which reaches the Earth. Upon entering the terrestrial atmosphere, the gamma ray will produce a cascade of energetic particles that travels to detectors on the ground. Credit: Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University.

Figure 2. Diagram of a HAWC Cherenkov detector, with a person shown for scale. Inside the Cherenkov detector, a high-energy charged particle (red line) produces Cherenkov light (green lines) as it moves from top to bottom through the tank. The Cherenkov light is recorded by four highly sensitive photo-sensors placed at the bottom of the Cherenkov detector. By combining measurements from many tanks the properties of the original gamma ray or cosmic ray can be inferred.

Figure 3. Image of an event produced by particle cascade in the HAWC observatory. The larger circles represent each Cherenkov detector in HAWC, each contains 4 photo-sensors represented in the figure as smaller circles. The color of each small circle or photo-sensor represents the arrival time of the particle cascade to each sensor. This is one of the first images recorded by HAWC since the beginning of operations. In particular, this cascade arrived from the upper left to the bottom right and its center hit HAWC at the “X” mark. The time scale is given in the lower scale in nanometers.

Figure 4. The HAWC Observatory taken in August 2013 from the summit of Sierra Negra. The image has been digitally altered to show HAWC as it will appear when construction is complete in 2014. The 111 Cherenkov detectors currently installed (100 Cherenkov detectors in operation) are colored white and located in the upper right quadrant of the array.

Background: The Most Energetic Particles in the Known Universe

Gamma rays (electromagnetic radiation of very high frequency) and cosmic rays (subatomic particles of very high energy) are products of the most energetic and cataclysmic events in the known universe. These phenomena include the collisions of two neutron stars, the explosions of supernovae, binary systems of stars with stellar accretion, and active gal actic nuclei which host black holes millions of times more massive than the sun.

When high-energy cosmic rays and gamma rays reach the Earth, they interact with air molecules in the upper atmosphere. Gamma rays, for example, are converted into pairs of charged matter and anti-matter particles (mainly electrons and positrons). These particles rapidly interact with other air molecules, producing additional gamma rays of reduced energy, which then create further charged particle pairs. This chain reaction proceeds until a large cascade of particles and radiation reaches ground level, where it can be recorded in the HAWC detectors.

When the charged particle cascade from an extra-terrestrial gamma ray passes through a Cherenkov detector, its particles are traveling faster than the speed of light in water. The resulting effect is similar to the shock wave produced in the atmosphere by a supersonic airplane (a "sonic boom"), but instead of producing sound the particles produce a visible cone of light. The flash of light, called Cherenkov radiation, is measured by the light sensor fixed to the bottom of each detector in HAWC. By combining the light signal observed in many tanks with fast electronics and high precision computing equipment, it is possible for scientists to determine the time of arrival, energy, and direction of the original extraterrestrial gamma ray or cosmic ray.

VAN ALLEN SPEED

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Van Allen Probes Pinpoint Driver of Speeding Electrons


Research team solves decades-old mystery that threatens satellites


LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 25, 2013—Researchers believe they have solved a lingering mystery about how electrons within Earth’s radiation belt can suddenly become energetic enough to kill orbiting satellites. Thanks to data gathered from an intrepid pair of NASA probes roaming the harsh space environment within the Van Allen radiation belts, scientists have identified an internal electron accelerator operating within the belts.

"For years we thought the Van Allen belts were pretty well behaved and changed slowly," said Geoffrey Reeves of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Intelligence and Space Research Division. "With more measurements, however, we realized how quickly and unpredictably the radiation belts change, and now we have real evidence that the changes originate from within the belts themselves."

In a paper released today in Science Express, Reeves and colleagues from the University of New Hampshire, University of Colorado at Boulder, NASA Goddard Flight Center, Aerospace Corporation, University of California-Los Angeles, and University of Iowa, describe a mechanism by which electrons suddenly accelerate to fantastic speeds within the Van Allen belts— a pair of donut shaped zones of charged particles that surround Earth and occupy the inner region of our planet’s Magnetosphere.

Traveling at 99 percent the speed of light, the super-fast electrons are among the speediest particles naturally produced by Earth, and have energies so high that they can penetrate and destroy satellite components. The research paves the way for scientists to possibly predict hazardous space weather and allow satellite operators to potentially prepare for the ravages of sudden space storms.

The radiation belts, named after their discoverer, James Van Allen, are comprised of an outer region of extremely high-energy electrons, with an inner region of energetic protons and electrons. The belts have been studied extensively since the dawn of the Space Age, because the high-energy particles in the outer ring can cripple or disrupt spacecraft. Long-term observation of the belts have hinted that the belts can act as efficient and powerful particle accelerators; recent observations by the Van Allen Probes (formerly known as the Radiation Belt Storm Probes)—a pair of spacecraft launched in August 2012—now seem to confirm this.

On October 9, 2012, while flying through the radiation belts, the Van Allen Probes measured a sudden, nearly thousand-fold increase in the energy of electrons within the outer belt. The rapid increase came on the heels of a period of waning energies the week before. The October 9 event mimicked an observed, but poorly understood event measured in 1997 by another spacecraft. Ever since the 1997 event, scientists have pondered whether the increase in electron energy was the result of forces outside of the belts, a mechanism known as "radial acceleration," or from forces within the belts, known as "local acceleration." Data from the Van Allen Probes seems to put this question to rest.

Because the twin Van Allen Probes follow each other and cut through the belts at different times, researchers were able to see that the October 9 increase originated from within the heart of the belts, indicative of local acceleration. The data also showed that higher electron fluxes did not move from a region outside of the belts slowly toward our planet, a detail corroborated by other geosynchronous satellites located outside of the belts.

"In the October 9, 2012, event, all of the acceleration took place in about 12 hours," said Reeves, a space physicist and principal author of the Science paper. "With previous measurement, a satellite might have only been able to fly through such an event once and not get a chance to witness the changes actually happening."

The researchers are now trying to understand exactly how the acceleration took place. Right now, the team believes that electromagnetic radio waves somehow excite the electrons into a higher-energy state, much like a microwave oven excites and heats water molecules. Members of the team are looking hard at waves known as "Chorus Waves" that are often observed in the region of the belts where the local acceleration was strongest. Chorus Waves are a type of electromagnetic radio wave with frequencies within the range of human hearing. Chorus Waves provide a haunting cacophony like a flock of extraterrestrial birds.

"We don’t know whether it is Chorus Waves or some other type of electromagnetic wave that’s behind the electron acceleration we are seeing," said Reeves, "but the Van Allen Probes are also equipped with instruments that should help us figure that out as well. Each of these discoveries take us a step closer to the goal of forecasting these extreme space weather events and making space safer for satellites."



　
 

LANL INVOLVED IN DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER-STRENGTH, LIGHTER-WEIGHT STEELS FOR AUTO INDUSTRY

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Auto industry steel project to boost efficiency, safety
Los Alamos partners with Colorado School of Mines in $1.2 million clean-energy manufacturing project

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 11, 2013—Higher-strength, lighter-weight steels could be coming to a car near you in the near future as part of a U.S. Department of Energy advanced manufacturing initiative. Los Alamos National Laboratory and Colorado School of Mines (CSM) researchers are lending their expertise to a three-year, $1.2 million project to develop a new class of advanced steels for the automotive industry, materials that will be produced using cleaner manufacturing methods and eliminating the traditional heat-treatment and associated costs and hazards of the process.

“The new project’s goal is to eliminate the time and energy required to heat these parts to around 900°C (red-hot) by creating steels that will meet the safety requirement and still be formable at room temperature,” said Kester Clarke, one of the Los Alamos researchers. The current method for forming safety-critical “b-pillars” for automotive applications is a process called hot-stamping.

As experts in phase transformations in steels, microstructural evolution and alloying/processing response, researchers will use specialized Los Alamos capabilities to help meet the project’s advanced manufacturing initiatives.

The project, “Quenching and Partitioning Process Development to Replace Hot Stamping of High Strength Automotive Steel,” is led by CSM Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Professor Emmanuel De Moor, along with colleagues David Matlock and John Speer of the school’s Advanced Steel Processing and Products Research Center. Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers Amy Clarke (a Mines alumna), Robert Hackenberg and Kester Clarke (also a Mines graduate) are also part of the effort as well as industrial partners AK Steel, General Motors Corporation, Nucor Steel, Severstal, Toyota and United States Steel Corporation.

Specialized equipment at Los Alamos such as a quench dilatometer will be used to provide critical details about phase transformations during heating and cooling, which will, in turn, guide the development of steel compositions and thermal processing routes. Advanced microstructure characterization techniques, including electron microscopy, neutron diffraction and bulk thermal- and deformation-processing capabilities will be used to simulate industrial-scale processing.

The project is part of a DOE $23.5 million investment in innovative manufacturing R&D projects. This new funding for advanced manufacturing—as well as $54 million invested in 13 projects during the first round of selections in June of 2012—will serve as a ground floor investment in Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's new Clean Energy Manufacturing Initiative. DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Office hosted a summit in Washington DC June 24-25.

LANL BEATS WASTE SHIPMENT GOAL

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Los Alamos Exceeds Waste Shipping Goal
Lab breaks another record with three months remaining in fiscal year

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 8, 2013—Los Alamos National Laboratory, which broke its waste shipping records in 2012, has exceeded last year’s record with three months left to go in fiscal year 2013. During the past nine months, Los Alamos shipped 1,074 cubic meters of transuranic (TRU) and mixed low-level waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and other approved waste disposal facilities, exceeding last year’s record of 920 cubic meters.

“Los Alamos continues to exceed expectations dispositioning waste from Area G,” said Pete Maggiore, assistant manager for Environmental Operations at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos Field Office. “The success of this campaign has been made possible through the efforts of many people, including our partners at the New Mexico Environment Department.”

The effort is part of an agreement between the New Mexico Environment Department and the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration and Office of Environmental Management to remove 3,706 cubic meters of TRU waste stored aboveground at Area G, the Laboratory’s waste storage facility, by June 30, 2014. The accelerated removal campaign is in its second year, with a goal to remove 2,600 cubic meters of waste by September 30, 2013. Since the campaign began, Los Alamos has removed 1,994 cubic meters of waste.

“We’ve made significant progress removing waste stored above ground at Area G, and we made this progress while maintaining an excellent safety record,” said Jeff Mousseau, associate director of Environmental Programs at the Laboratory. “We are confident this trend will continue throughout the rest of the campaign.”

What is transuranic, or TRU, waste?

TRU waste consists of clothing, tools, rags, debris, soil and other items contaminated with radioactive material, mostly plutonium. Transuranic elements such as plutonium have an atomic number greater than uranium, so they are labeled transuranic, for “beyond uranium” on the periodic table of elements.

About 90 percent of the current TRU waste inventory is a result of decades of nuclear research and weapons production at the Laboratory and is often referred to as “legacy” waste.

MAKING X-RAY IMAGING MORE PORTABLE

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Los Alamos/Tribogenics Create Highly Portable Imaging System

Application to be featured at IAEA conference on nuclear security in Vienna

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., and MARINA DEL REY, Calif., June 26, 2013 - Los Alamos National Laboratory and Tribogenics, the pioneer of innovative X-ray solutions, have partnered to create a unique, lightweight, compact, low-cost X-ray system that uses the MiniMAX (Miniature, Mobile, Agile, X-ray) camera to provide real-time inspection of sealed containers and facilities. The innovative technology will be featured at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) International Conference on Nuclear Security: Enhancing Global Efforts, July 1-5, in Vienna, Austria.


"Cost and portability are the major barriers to expanding the use of X-ray imaging," said Scott Watson of Los Alamos's Nuclear Engineering and Nonproliferation Division. "We designed MiniMAX to demonstrate that such a system will open up new applications in security inspection, field medicine, specimen radiography and industrial inspection."

Los Alamos has developed MiniMAX as an alternative to the large, expensive and fixed facilities presently required for security inspections using X-ray imaging. The complete MiniMAX portable radiography system weighs less than five pounds, compared to much larger and heavier systems currently available.

Los Alamos Physicists demonstrated MiniMAX using a conventional X-ray source, a radioisotopic source, and a prototype source from Tribogenics operating at 90 keV. The Los Alamos team used the Tribogenics source to produce an X-ray image of a hand-held calculator.

"We were delighted when Los Alamos approached us to explore a partnership," said Carlos Camara, Chief Scientist at Tribogenics. "This is exactly the type of breakthrough, portable application we envision for our disruptive X-ray technology."


About Tribogenics

Tribogenics is a transformative X-ray technology company developing affordable and highly portable solutions for materials analysis and imaging. The Tribogenics range of X-ray sources includes the X-Change™ cartridge, the world’s smallest turnkey X-ray source designed for use in revolutionary new XRF systems. Tribogenics technology is based on a DARPA-funded initiative that originated at UCLA and the company is venture-backed by prominent investors, including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

Photo Caption: A hand-held calculator that was X-rayed by Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers using the MiniMAX camera, a lightweight, portable X-ray machine that could revolution imaging of closed containers. (photo credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory)

PUMPING TEST BEGINS ON CHROMIUM PLUME

Well R-50 at Los Alamos National Laboratory has detected chromium at levels which exceed New Mexico standards. Photo taken during well construction in 2011. (LANL photo)

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY 

Los Alamos National Laboratory Begins Pumping Tests on Chromium Plume

About chromium
Chromium occurs naturally in the environment in two forms, trivalent, Cr(III), and hexavalent, Cr(VI). The Environmental Protection Agency identifies hexavalent chromium in groundwater as having potential adverse health effects when ingested at concentrations elevated above naturally occurring levels. Chromium in the groundwater plume at LANL is hexavalent chromium

Data will be used to help determine final remedy

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., May 22, 2013—Los Alamos National Laboratory will begin pumping tests this summer at two groundwater monitoring wells located on Lab property within a chromium plume in the regional aquifer.

The purpose of the pumping tests is to refine understanding of the plume properties within the regional aquifer and evaluate the potential for large-scale pumping to remove chromium. Chromium concentrations in the plume exceed state and federal standards for groundwater.

"These pumping tests are a key step in identifying measures to address the plume," said Pete Maggiore, assistant manager for environmental projects at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos Field Office. "Data from this testing will be used to recommend a final remedy which we will then submit to the state."

The chromium investigation is part of environmental work being conducted under the 2005 Consent Order between New Mexico, the Lab and the Department of Energy. Under the Consent Order process, the state will select a final remedy after input from the public.

The chromium originated from cooling towers at a Laboratory power plant and was released from 1956 to 1972. At that time, chromium was commonly used in industry as a corrosion inhibitor. Water containing chromium was flushed out of the cooling towers into Sandia Canyon and over time infiltrated into the regional aquifer beneath Mortandad Canyon. The Laboratory estimates that approximately 160,000 pounds of chromium were discharged into the environment in this manner.

The Laboratory discovered the plume in late 2005 and has investigated the nature and extent of the plume since then. A network of 20 monitoring wells at various depths is used to define and monitor the chromium. The wells are part of a larger effort to address chromium, which includes stabilization of a wetland near the location where the chromium was released into Sandia Canyon. Stabilization of the wetland helps ensure that immobile chromium present in wetland sediments remains in place and in its non-toxic form.

The federal standard for total chromium in groundwater is 100 parts per billion (ppb) and the New Mexico standard is 50 ppb. The Laboratory has detected and reported levels of less than 50 ppb at the plume boundaries to approximately 1,000 ppb in the center.

Water supply wells outside the plume all have "sentinel" monitoring wells nearby to detect early arrival of the contaminant plume. The sentinel wells show chromium concentrations are well below standards.

"Moving forward with a remedy that will ensure protection of the public and groundwater is one of our highest environmental priorities," said Jeff Mousseau, associate director for environmental programs at the Laboratory. "We’ve committed this to the state and it’s the right thing to do."

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY WORKS TOWARD STEMMING THE ADVANCE OF TUBERCULOSIS

An anteroposterior X-ray of a patient diagnosed with advanced bilateral pulmonary tuberculosis  Credit:  CDC/Wikimedia.

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Advancing the Art of Tuberculosis Detection
New approach to finding a TB biomarker could provide earlier diagnosis
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 19, 2013—New work from Los Alamos National Laboratory shows promise for stemming the advance of tuberculosis (TB) by revealing how the bacterium interacts with its human hosts and thus providing a new pathway for early detection in patients.

A recent publication from the Los Alamos Biosensor Team describes the association of a key tuberculosis virulence factor, lipoarabinomannan (LAM) with human high-density lipoproteins (HDL) in blood. "Understanding the pathophysiology of tuberculosis, and the distribution of pathogen-associated molecules in the host, is essential to developing efficient methods of intervention," said Harshini Mukundan, corresponding author on the paper.

"Association of lipoarabinomannan with high density lipoprotein in blood: Implications for diagnostics" Tuberculosis 93 (2013) was published April 3rd, 2013, in the journal Tuberculosis.

The team’s efforts have focused on using the LAM virulence factor as a sensitive indicator for TB. The problem has been that the biomarker, while being a reliable early indicator of TB, is very difficult to detect, especially in blood. Previously, the team has developed strategies for the detection of this biomarker in urine (Mukundan H et al, Tuberculosis, June 2012). Subsequently, they developed a strategy for the ultra-sensitive detection of the biomarker using a novel method, called membrane insertion (Mukundan H et al, Tuberculosis, Jan 2012)

The researchers extend the membrane insertion approach to the detection of molecules like LAM in patient serum using a device called an ultrasensitive wave-guide based biosensor. The measurement technique, or assay, exploits both the water-repellant and absorbent properties of LAM, a feature common to many bacterial virulence factors. These measurements raised a key question as to why the quantities of LAM in blood serum are usually low, despite high concentrations in urine from the same individuals.

It appears that LAM, an amphiphile (meaning it has both hydrophobic and hydrophilic components), is associated with carrier molecules such as HDL (a lipoprotein) in the blood of patients infected with tuberculosis. The concept is very simple. A drop of oil will not be free-floating in water. Similarly, amphiphilic LAM cannot be free floating in aqueous blood, but it associates with carrier molecules such as the lipoprotein HDL. Such an association is likely to affect host–pathogen interactions, pathogen distribution and clearance in the host, and must be thoroughly understood for the effective design of vaccines and diagnostics. The team has exploited this interaction to design a novel assay for the capture of such molecular components, termed HDL capture.

As it happens, many bacterial virulence factors share similar biochemical properties as LAM. Examples include the lipopolysaccharide from E. coli. Thus, this observation has far-reaching applications to the understanding of the interaction of the human host with many pathogens, not just TB.

Despite the global prevalence of the disease and its ancient association with the human population, current methods for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis, especially its drug-resistant variants, remain inadequate. Through development of more sensitive detection techniques, earlier and more accurate diagnosis may become a simpler task.

Sponsorship and authors

The work was supported in part, by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health (CEB) and the South Korean Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs, World Health Organization FIND grant A50452; Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, and a Los Alamos National Laboratory Directed Research Award.

Authors: Rama Murthy Sakamuri, Dominique N. Price, Basil I. Swanson, Harshini Mukundan (all of Los Alamos National Laboratory), Myungsun Lee, Sang Nae Cho (International Tuberculosis Research Center, Changwon, Republic of Korea), Clifton E. Barry 3rd, Laura E. Via (Tuberculosis Research Section, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD)

ANTIBODY EVOLUTION AND HIV VACCINE DEVELOPMENT

Co-evolution of virus and antibody – The evolution of the viral protein (green) from 14 weeks through 100 weeks post-transmission is compared to the maturation of the human antibody. Image courtesy Los Alamos National Laboratory.

 
FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Antibody Evolution Could Guide HIV Vaccine Development

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 4, 2013—Observing the evolution of a particular type of antibody in an infected HIV-1 patient, a study spearheaded by Duke University, including analysis from Los Alamos National Laboratory, has provided insights that will enable vaccination strategies that mimic the actual antibody development within the body.

The kind of antibody studied is called a broadly cross-reactive neutralizing antibody, and details of its generation could provide a blueprint for effective vaccination, according to the study’s authors. In a paper published online in Nature this week, the team reported on the isolation, evolution and structure of a broadly neutralizing antibody from an African donor followed from the time of infection.

The observations trace the co-evolution of the virus and antibodies, ultimately leading to the development of a strain of the potent antibodies in this subject, and they could provide insights into strategies to elicit similar antibodies by vaccination.

Patients early in HIV-1 infection have primarily a single "founder" form of the virus that has been strong enough to infect the patient, even though the population in the originating patient is usually far more diverse and contains a wide variety of HIV mutations. Once the founder virus is involved in the new patient’s system, the surrounding environment stimulates the HIV to mutate and form a unique, tailored population of virus that is specific to the individual.

The team, including Bette Korber, Peter Hraber, and S. Gnanakaran, of Los Alamos National Laboratory, led by Barton Haynes of Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, with colleagues at Boston University, the National Institutes of Health, and other institutions as part of a large collaboration, showed that broadly neutralizing antibodies developed only after the population of viruses in the individual had matured and become more diverse.

"Our hope is that a vaccine based on the series of HIV variants that evolved within this subject, that were together capable of stimulating this potent broad antibody response in his natural infection, may enable triggering similar protective antibody responses in vaccines," said Bette Korber, leader of the Los Alamos team.

This study was supported by the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and by intramural National Institutes of Health (NIH) support for the NIAID Vaccine Research Center, by grants from the NIH, NIAID, AI067854 (the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology) and AI100645 (the Center for Vaccine Immunology-Immunogen Discovery). Use of sector 22 (Southeast Region Collaborative Access team) at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory was supported by the US Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, under contract number W-31-109-Eng-38.

RECORD BREAKING SUPERCOMPUTER WILL COMPUTE NO MORE

Photo:  The Roadrunner.  Los Alamos National Laboratory

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
End of the Road for Roadrunner
Once the World’s Fastest Supercomputer; Central to the Success of Stockpile Stewardship
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 29, 2013—Roadrunner, the first supercomputer to break the once-elusive petaflop barrier—one million billion calculations per second—will be decommissioned on Sunday, March 31.

During its five operational years, Roadrunner, part of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program to provide key computer simulations for the Stockpile Stewardship Program, was a workhorse system providing computing power for stewardship of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, and in its early shakedown phase, a wide variety of unclassified science. The IBM system achieved petaflop speed in 2008, shortly after installation at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"Roadrunner exemplified stockpile stewardship: an excellent team integrating complex codes with advanced computing architectures to ensure a safe, secure and effective deterrent," said Chris Deeney, NNSA Assistant Deputy Administrator for Stockpile Stewardship. "Roadrunner and its successes have positioned us well to weather the technology changes on the HPC horizon as we implement stockpile modernization without recourse to underground testing."

Roadrunner's design was unique, and controversial. It combined two different kinds of processors, making it a "hybrid." It had 6,563 dual-core general-purpose processors (AMD Opterons™), with each core linked to a special graphics processor (PowerXCell 8i) called a "Cell." The Cell was an enhanced version of a specialized processor originally designed for the Sony Playstation 3®, adapted specifically to support scientific computing.

Although other hybrid computers existed, none were at the supercomputing scale. Many doubted that a hybrid supercomputer could work, so for Los Alamos and IBM, Roadrunner was a leap of faith.

High-speed calculation was the primary goal. When a computer is fast enough to improve simulation detail and fidelity, with reasonable turnaround time, the resulting simulations deepen a scientists’ understanding of the phenomena they’re studying. As part of its Stockpile Stewardship work, Roadrunner took on a difficult, long-standing gap in understanding of energy flow in a weapon and its relation to weapon yield. Roadrunner made a significant contribution to that understanding.

In the area of general science, while Roadrunner provided a platform to study a wide variety of scientific unknowns at an unprecedented scale while in unclassified shakedown mode. Research included nanowire material behavior, magnetic reconnection, laser backscatter, HIV phylogenetics, and a simulation of the universe at a 70-billion-particle scale.

"Roadrunner was a truly pioneering idea," said Gary Grider of the Laboratory's High Performance Computing Division. "Roadrunner got everyone thinking in new ways about how to build and use a supercomputer. Specialized processors are being included in new ways on new systems, and being used in novel ways. Our demonstration with Roadrunner caused everyone to pay attention."

Roadrunner’s speed was derived from its architecture. Its two processors shared functions, with the Cell taking on the most computationally intense parts of a calculation—thus acting as a computational accelerator. This improved the simulations and made great strides in energy efficiency by linking its general-purpose processors to specialized ones.

"What Roadrunner did was exactly what it was intended to do: get the weapons codes moving toward new architectures," said Cheryl Wampler of the Weapons Physics directorate. "Roadrunner was challenging because the supercomputing future was challenging."

Future supercomputers will need to improve on Roadrunner’s energy efficiency to make the power bill affordable. Future supercomputers will also need new solutions for handling and storing the vast amounts of data involved in such massive calculations.

It's estimated that sometime between 2020 and 2030 supercomputers will reach the exascale—one quintillion calculations per second— or one thousand times faster than Roadrunner. Such speed bodes well for the needs of U.S. weapons laboratories, and for the advancement of science.

Without ceremony, this weekend the World's Fastest Supercomputer from 2008 will be switched off. But it will not be forgotten. Advancements made possible by Roadrunner have informed current computing architectures and will help shape future designs.

"Even in death," said Grider, "we are trying to learn from Roadrunner."

After the machine is shut off but before it is dismantled, researchers will have a about one month to do experiments on operating system memory compression techniques for an ASC relevant application, and optimized data routing to help guide the design of future capacity cluster computers.

"These are things we never could try while Roadrunner was running production problems," Grider added.

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY LOOKS AT HOW HIV ATTACKS

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Research Deciphers HIV Attack Plan
Scientists get inside look at how AIDS virus grooms its assault team

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 29, 2013—A new study by Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of Pennsylvania scientists defines previously unknown properties of transmitted HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS. The viruses that successfully pass from a chronically infected person to a new individual are both remarkably resistant to a powerful initial human immune-response mechanism, and they are blanketed in a greater amount of envelope protein that helps them access and enter host cells.

These findings will help inform vaccine design and interpretation of vaccine trials, and provide new insights into the basic biology of viral/host dynamics of infection.

During the course of each AIDS infection, the HIV-1 virus evolves within the infected person to escape the host’s natural immune response and adapt to the local environment within the infected individual. Because HIV evolves so rapidly and so extensively, each person acquires and harbors a complex, very diverse set of viruses that develops over the years of their infection. Yet when HIV is transmitted to a new person from their partner, typically only a single virus from the diverse set in the partner is transmitted to establish the new infection.

The key discoveries here are the specific features that distinguish those specific viruses which successfully move to the new host, compared with the myriad forms in the viral population present in a chronically infected individual.

"The viruses that make it through transmission barriers to infect a new person are particularly infectious and resilient," said Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Bette Korber. "Through this study we now better understand the biology that defines that resilience."

The team set out to determine whether the viruses that were successfully transmitted to a new patient might share distinct biological properties relative to those typically isolated from people with long-term, chronic infection. To do this, the group at U Penn cloned a set of intact viruses from acute infection, and a set of viruses from chronically infected people, and characterized them by measuring quantities that might be related to the virus's ability to successfully establish a new infection. They discovered several clear correlations. For example, transmitted viruses were both more infectious and contained more protective "envelope" per virus; envelope is the protein the virus uses to enter host cells.

The team identified an additional interesting property that could be a general characteristic of new viral infections: the transmitted HIV was capable of replicating and growing well in the presence of alpha interferon. Alpha interferon production is part of our innate human immune response to a new infection. As soon as a new viral infection is initiated in our bodies, local immune cells at the site of infection start secreting molecules called cytokines that have general antiviral activity and can inhibit the production of the newly infected virus. Alpha interferon is one of these potent cytokines.

In the early days of an HIV infection, this innate immune response increases to an intense level, called a "cytokine storm," which gradually recedes during infection. For a newly transmitted HIV to successfully establish infection, it must grow and expand in the new host while facing this cytokine storm. Although typical chronic viruses are sensitive to and inhibited by alpha interferon, transmitted HIV-1 viruses grew well in the presence of interferon.

CLEVERNESS AND TOOL EVOLUTION



Photo caption: Ancient stone tools showing the pace of remarkable technological enhancements over time (1.75 to 0.85 million years ago). Credit, Los Alamos National Laboratory.

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Documenting Stone Age Cleverness By Tool Development
Ancient handaxe craftsmanship gives insight into mental advances

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 12, 2013—LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 12, 2013—Stone Age man’s gradual improvement in tool development, particularly in crafting stone handaxes, is providing insight into the likely mental advances these early humans made a million years ago. Better tools make for better hunting, and better tools come from more sophisticated thought processes. Close analysis of bits of chipped and flaked stone from across Ethiopia is helping scientists crack the code of how these early humans thought over time.

Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow Giday WoldeGabriel and a team of Ethiopian, Japanese, American and German researchers recently examined the world’s oldest handaxes and other stone tools from southern Ethiopia. Their observation of improved workmanship over time indicates a distinct advance in mental capabilities of the residents in the entire region, with potential impacts in tool-development skills, and in overall spatial and navigational capabilities, all of which improved their hunting adaptation.

"Even though fossil remains of the tool makers are not commonly preserved, the handaxes clearly archive the evolution of innovation in craftsmanship, acquired intelligence and social behavior in a pre-human community over a million-year interval," said WoldeGabriel.

The scientists determined the age of the tools based on the interlayered volcanic ashes with the handaxe-bearing sedimentary deposits in Konso, Ethiopia. Handaxes and other double-sided or bifacial tools are known as the first purposely-shaped tools made by humanity and are closely associated with Homo erectus, an ancestor of modern humans. A paper in a special series of inaugural articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, "The characteristics and chronology of the earliest Acheulean at Konso, Ethiopia," described their work.

Some experts suggest that manufacturing three-dimensional symmetric tools is possible only with advanced mental-imaging capacities. Such tools might have emerged in association with advanced spatial and navigational cognition, perhaps related to an enhanced mode of hunting adaptation. Purposeful thinning of large bifacial tools is technologically difficult, the researchers note. In modern humans, acquisition and transmission of such skills occur within a complex social context that enables sustained motivation during long-term practice and learning over a possible five-year period.

Making the right tools for the job

Researchers observed that the handaxes’ structure evolved from thick, roughly-manufactured stone tools in the earliest period of Acheulean tool making, approximately 1.75 million years ago to thinner and more symmetric tools around 0.85 Ma or megaannum, a unit of time equal to one million years. The Acheulean is a stone-age technology named after a site in France where handaxes from this tradition were first discovered.

The chronological framework for this handaxe assemblage, based on the ages of volcanic ashes and sediments, suggests that this type of tool making was being established on a regional scale at that time, paralleling the emergence of Homo erectus-like hominid morphology. The appearance of the Ethiopian Acheulean handaxes at approximately 1.75 Ma is chronologically indistinguishable from similar tools recently found west of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, more than 125 miles to the south.

"To me, the most intriguing story of the discovery is that a pre-human community lived in a locality known as Konso at the southern end of the Ethiopian Rift System for at least a million years and how the land sustained the livelihood of the occupants for that long period of time. In contrast, look at what our species has done to Earth in less than 100,000 years – the time it took for modern humans to disperse out of Africa and impose our voracious appetite for resources, threatening our planet and our existence," WoldeGabriel said.

The research team

WoldeGabriel is a specialist in field and volcanic geology and geochronology, and together with his research collaborators examined the scattered geologic sections in which early hominid fossils and tools are found. Through geological fieldwork, volcanic ash chemistry and geochronology, he helps to rebuild the time and space framework of the paleo landscape.

In addition to the Konso research project, WoldeGabriel is also co-leader and lead geologist of the Middle Awash project, a collaborative research project in Ethiopia of the Institute of Geophysics, Planetary Physics and Signatures and University of California, Berkeley, which has recovered the fossil remains of at least eight species, including some of the earliest hominids, spanning the past six million years.

The team that studied the handaxes and their geological context includes researchers Yonas Beyene (Association for Research and Conservation of Culture, Ethiopia) and Berhane Asfaw (Rift Valley Research Service, Ethiopia), Shigehiro Katoh (Hyogo Museum of Nature and Human Activities, Japan), Kozo Uto (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and technology, Japan), Megumi Kondo (Ochanomizu University, Japan), Masayuki Hyodo (Kobe University) and Gen Suwa (University of Tokyo), William K. Hart (Miami University of Ohio), Paul R. Renne (Berkeley Geochronology Center and University of California, Berkeley) and WoldeGabriel (Los Alamos National Laboratory) and Masafumi Sudo (University of Potsdam, Germany). The Institute of Geophysics, Planetary Physics and Signatures provided partial funding for the Los Alamos research.