MARTIAN ROCK VARNISH



This dual image of a Martian rock taken by the ChemCam instrument aboard the Curiosity rover shows a rock at the "Rocknest" area on Mars before it was interrogated with ChemCam's high-powered laser (left) and after interrogation by 600 laser blasts (right). The crosshairs in the darkened portion of the image at right shows where the laser beam penetrated to a depth of at least 1 mm as a result of the repeated shots. The ChemCam laser vaporizes a small amount of material that can be read by a spectrometer to determine the target's composition. Los Alamos National Laboratory postdoctoral researcher Nina Lanza is studying whether Martian rocks are coated with dust or some other substance, and she presented her research at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at The Woodlands, Texas. (photo credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory)

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos Science Sleuth on the Trail of a Martian Mystery
Postdoctoral researcher sees promise in data from cutting room floor


THE WOODLANDS, Texas, March 19, 2013—When it comes to examining the surface of rocks on Mars with a high-powered laser, five is a magic number for Los Alamos National Laboratory postdoctoral researcher Nina Lanza.

During a poster session today at the 44th Annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at The Woodlands, Texas, Lanza described how the laser-shooting ChemCam instrument aboard the Curiosity rover currently searching the surface of Mars for signs of habitability has shown what appears to be a common feature on the surface of some very different Martian rocks during Curiosity’s first 90 days on the Red Planet.

But exactly what that common feature is remains an intriguing mystery—and one that Lanza intends to solve.

The ChemCam instrument uses an extremely powerful laser to vaporize a pinpoint of rock surface. The instrument then reads the chemical composition of the vaporized sample with a spectrometer. The highly accurate laser can fire multiple pulses in the same spot, providing scientists with an opportunity to gently interrogate a rock sample, even up to a millimeter in depth. Many rocks are zapped 30 to 50 times in a single location, and one rock was zapped 600 times.

Members of the ChemCam team generally discard results from the first five laser blasts because of a belief that after the first five blasts, the laser has penetrated to a depth that provides a true representative sample of rock chemistry.

Instead of tossing out those data, however, Lanza looked at them specifically across a diverse set of Martian rocks. She found that the first five shots had chemical similarities regardless the rock type. What’s more, after five shots, like other scientists had noticed, the spectrum from the vaporized rock stabilized into a representative sample of the rock type below.

"Why is it always five shots?" Lanza wondered.

It could be the first five shots were reading a layer of dust that had settled onto the surface of every rock, but results in laboratories on Earth seem to indicate that the first laser blast creates a tiny shockwave that is very effective at clearing dust from the sample. Therefore, if the first blast is dusting off the rocks, the remaining four blasts could be showing that Martian rocks are coated by a substance, similar in structure if not composition, to the dark rock varnish appearing on Earth rocks in arid locations like the desert Southwest.

"The thing about rock varnishes is the mechanism behind why they form is not clearly understood," Lanza said. "Some people believe that rock varnish results from an interaction of small amounts of water from humidity in the air with the surface of rocks—a chemical reaction that forms a coating. Others think there could be a biological component to the formation of rock varnishes, such as bacteria or fungi that interact with dust on the rocks and excrete varnish components onto the surface." Lanza is quick to point out that she’s making no concrete claim as to the identity or origin of whatever is being seen during the first five shots of each ChemCam sampling. The common signature from the first five blasts could indeed be entirely surface dust, or it could be a rock coating or a rind formed by natural weathering processes.

As the mission progresses, Lanza hopes that integrating other instruments aboard Curiosity with ChemCam sampling activities could help rule out unknowns such as surface dust, while careful experiments here on Earth could provide crucial clues for solving the Martian mystery of the first five shots.

"If we can find a reason for this widespread alteration of the surface of Martian rocks, it will tell us something about the Martian environment and the amount of water present there," Lanza said. "It will also allow us to make the argument that what we’re seeing is the result of some kind of current geological process, which could give us insight into extraterrestrial geology or even terrestrial geology if what we’re seeing is a coating similar to what we find here on Earth."
 

MARS SCIENCE TEAM TOUTS CHEMCAM DATA



This image shows the ChemCam mast unit mounted on the Curiosity rover as it is being prepared in the clean room prior to the launch of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission. ChemCam fires a powerful laser that can sample Martian rocks and provide critical clues about the Red Planet's habitability. (Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory)

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
ChemCam Data Abundant at Planetary Conference
Laser instrument aboard Curiosity rover provides well over 40,000 shots so far

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 15, 2013—Members of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover ChemCam team will present more than two dozen posters and talks next week during the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

"ChemCam has performed flawlessly in its first six months, providing more than a gigabyte of exciting new information about the Red Planet," said Los Alamos National Laboratory planetary scientist Roger Wiens, Principal Investigator of the ChemCam Team. "Since Curiosity’s successful landing on Mars on August 6, 2012, ChemCam has fired more than 40,000 shots at more than a thousand different locations with its high-powered laser. Each of those shots has yielded exciting information about the Martian habitat, and our team has been extremely busy making sense of what we’re seeing in anticipation of presenting it to planetary scientists and the public. The Curiosity mission continues to amaze us with new discoveries, finding Mars to be very Earth-like in many ways."

The ChemCam team’s work will be showcased during a series of special sessions at the conference on Monday and during a blitz of poster sessions on Tuesday. The international team of researchers will provide everything from a geological tour of the Martian landscape during the first six months of the SUV-sized rover’s cross-country journey, to investigations of the dusty coating that covers every Martian rock, to a discussion of how scientists used calibration targets mounted on the rover to fine tune differences between spectral readings taken on Earth and on Mars.

ChemCam team member Nina Lanza was selected by conference organizers to chronicle her experiences as a presenter and a conference attendee through microblogging activities all week. Lanza will provide commentary and highlights of each day’s events through her Twitter feed (@marsninja).

The ChemCam system is one of 10 instruments mounted on the Curiosity rover—a six-wheeled mobile laboratory that will roam more than 12 miles of the planet’s surface during the course of one Martian year (98 Earth weeks). ChemCam can fire an extremely powerful laser pulse up to 23 feet onto an area the size of a pinhead. The laser vaporizes a tiny portion of the target. A spectrometer then translates the spectral colors of the plasma into the chemical composition of the vaporized material.

The ChemCam team is comprised of researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and the French space agency, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, as well as other researchers from the U.S., France, Canada, and the United Kingdom. ChemCam operations are now commanded from centers at Los Alamos and Toulouse, France.

"GEL MICRODROPLETS" HELP SCIENTISTS EXAMINE MULTI-ORGANISM GENOME

Los Alamos National Laboratory.  Credit:  U.S. Department Of Energy.

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
New Culturing Tool Reveals a Full Genome From Single Cells
Gel microdroplet culturing reveals intraspecies genomic diversity within the human microbiome

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 15, 2013—A new technique for genetic analysis, "gel microdroplets," helps scientists generate complete genomes from a single cell, thus opening the door to understanding the complex interrelationships of bacteria, viruses and eukaryotes that form "microbiome" communities in soil, in humans, and elsewhere in the natural world.

Microbes live in complex communities that function together as a whole in order to survive and thrive in their natural environments. Microbes survive almost everywhere, and they make up the majority of the living organisms on Earth and contribute to all aspects of human life, such as health, energy and even climate change.

Most types of bacteria cannot grow in the laboratory as a pure, isolated culture, however, due to complicated interactions that support their growth. This makes research challenging, as identifying a single organism’s genetic profile fails to take into account the interrelationships that are extremely important to understanding the microbe’s roles and capabilities in its specific location.

Scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory and the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego have made a breakthrough that gives researchers the bigger picture of the multi-organism genome, using the complete genome from a single cell.

The technique used over the past few years, metagenomics, avoids the need for culturing to produce mixed genetic info for the whole community. However, many of the biological questions, such as how the mixed bacterial or viral community members interact with each other, cannot be answered without genomic information about the various individual species in the community. The Los Alamos group, led by Cliff Han, Michael Fitzsimons (formerly of LANL), and Armand Dichosa, has been developing technologies to fulfill the need.

The technology has the potential to generate complete genomes from single cells of traditionally uncultured species. Using gel microdroplets (GMD), the science team created dozens to hundreds of identical cells from single cells, while keeping such cells separated from the rest of community and maintaining the cells’ ability to communicate with other community members.

From mixed bacterial communities inhabiting the human mouth and digestive gut, researchers captured single cells within microscopic GMD and incubated them in a defined growth medium.

The characteristic pores and channels of the agarose-based GMD allow for the movement of nutrients, chemical signals and metabolic wastes to and from the living cell as if it were in its natural environment. The captured single cells multiply to microcolonies of hundreds, thereby producing sufficient quantities of identical genomic templates. Ultimately, this allows for the completion of several genomes from the same bacterial species.

By completing and comparing the genomic profiles of these species, researchers found significant variations within the genomes of the same orally-located species, with few differences found from within gut-resident species. Such findings show how significantly active (or inactive) bacteria are in recombining specific segments of DNA with each other and raise questions as to how we identify a "species" if something as important as its neighborhood interactions can change its genetic profile.

With promising results of this human microbiome study, the team has begun to use GMD to culture bacteria and archaea in their native environments, such as wetland and water environments. Researchers want to capture known, rare and elusive species that cannot grow in laboratory settings, and also to provide completed genomes of these novel species that may, again, offer insight into the vital contributions of bacteria and archaea in local ecology and global climate change.

"We have demonstrated a novel approach for fully sequencing genomes of microorganisms found in complex communities," said Dichosa.

Previously, complete community genomes had been an unattainable goal because neither of the two competing technologies, shotgun metagenomics or single-cell sequencing, can recover a nearly complete genome from a single organism in a diverse sample. "We believe using GMDs to sequence complete genomes from environmental samples shows great promise and will allow for the first time a high throughput technology for exploring community pan-genomics," said Han.

Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and URS for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.

LOS ALAMOS ANNOUNCES NEW REPACKAGING FACILITY GOES ONLINE TO PROCESS NUCLEAR WASTE

A view of the new box line facility where transuranic waste will be repackaged at Los Alamos National Laboratory

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos National Laboratory opens new waste repackaging facility
Box line facility is largest of its kind ever built

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 7, 2013—Los Alamos National Laboratory has brought a third waste repackaging facility online to increase its capability to process nuclear waste for permanent disposal.

The "375 box line facility" enables Los Alamos to repackage transuranic (TRU) waste stored in large boxes.

Built inside a dome once used to house containers of waste at the Laboratory, the facility is the largest Perma-Con© structure ever constructed. A Perma-Con© is a modular structure typically used for radiological or hazardous containment. Contaminated items such as equipment and protective clothing, used during past operations at Los Alamos, are removed from their containers inside the structure and then are repackaged for shipment to licensed, permanent disposal facilities.

The record-setting structure is 110 feet long by 48 feet wide.

"We needed to build a structure big enough to accommodate these waste boxes, some of which are 40 feet long," said Jeff Mousseau, associate director of environmental programs at LANL. "These are the largest, most contaminated boxes of waste at Los Alamos, and this facility will give us the capability to repackage them safely."

The Perma-Con© structure was provided by Radiation Protection Systems, Inc.

"The 375 box line facility is the largest, most technically challenging and complex containment facility RPS has produced to date," said Bill Rambow, Radiation Protection Systems CEO. "The RPS team is very proud to have contributed to the LANL TRU waste disposal effort."

The facility is part of an effort to accelerate removal of 3,706 cubic meters of TRU waste currently stored above ground at Los Alamos. As part of an agreement with the State of New Mexico, the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Laboratory have made removing this waste one of their top environmental priorities. In the first year of the accelerated work, Los Alamos shattered its former nuclear waste shipping records, with more than 230 waste shipments resulting in the disposition of 920 cubic meters of TRU waste.

"This new repackaging facility will allow us to dispose of even greater volumes of TRU waste during the coming months," said Pete Maggiore, assistant manager for environmental operations at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos Field Office.

Photograph cutlines:

A view of the new box line facility where transuranic waste will be repackaged at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

A worker transports the first box of waste to be repackaged at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s newest box line facility.

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.

About Perma-Con© Modular Containment Structures The Perma-Con© structure built to process TRU waste at Los Alamos National Laboratory was provided by Radiation Protection Systems, Inc. A description of the modular enclosures, as well as company contact information, is provided here.

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY'S STRATEGY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Photo Credit:  Wikimedia Commons.

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos National Laboratory Announces Strategy for Long-Term Environmental Sustainability
Blueprint for planning work activities with the environment in mind


LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 1, 2013—The Department of Energy and Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a long-term strategy for environmental stewardship and sustainability that provides a blueprint for protecting the environment while accomplishing the Laboratory’s national security missions.

"This plan represents a significant amount of effort on the part of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos Field Office to set the standard for Environmental Stewardship in New Mexico," said Juan Griego, acting manager of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos Field Office. "It is intended to ensure that all actions undertaken by our office to support the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s mission have first taken environmental protection and stewardship into full consideration."

The Long-Term Strategy for Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability document presents the long-term environmental goals for the Laboratory and describes how managers can use a range of decision support tools to help them conduct their work in a way that protects the environment.

"The strategy integrates our environmental protection activities into one comprehensive program," said Pete Maggiore, assistant manager of the Environmental Projects Office for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos Field Office. "It’s designed to help us achieve our three environmental stewardship goals: clean up the past, control the present, and create a sustainable future."

The strategy document contains details about how Los Alamos will work to protect human and environmental health by:
Continuing to place a priority on cleaning up environmental contamination from the World War II and Cold War eras.
Controlling current programs to ensure that any impact to the environment is as low as reasonably achievable.
Creating a sustainable future through preventing pollution, eliminating waste, conserving energy and water, and fostering resilient ecosystems.
"We understand that the success and viability of the Laboratory depends on maintaining the public’s trust and confidence in our ability to protect human health and the environment," said Michael Brandt, the Lab’s associate director of Environment, Safety and Health. "It’s our responsibility to ensure that our operations have the least possible impact on the health of people and the environment, as well as on the plants, animals, and cultural resources in our area."

The document provides managers at Los Alamos with a guide to planning work in a way that safeguards the environment while fulfilling their technical missions.

QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY AND ELECTRIC GRID CYBERSECURITY

Photo caption: The miniature transmitter communicates with a trusted authority to generate random cryptographic keys to encode and decode information. Photo Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory.

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Quantum Cryptography Put to Work for Electric Grid Security
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Feb. 14, 2013—Recently a Los Alamos National Laboratory quantum cryptography (QC) team successfully completed the first-ever demonstration of securing control data for electric grids using quantum cryptography.

The demonstration was performed in the electric grid test bed that is part of the Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid (TCIPG) project at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) that was set up under the Department of Energy’s Cyber Security for Energy Delivery Systems program in the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability.

Novel methods for controlling the electric grid are needed to accommodate new energy sources such as renewables whose availability can fluctuate on short time scales. This requires transmission of data to and from control centers; but for grid-control use, data must be both trustworthy and delivered without delays. The simultaneous requirements of strong authentication and low latency are difficult to meet with standard cryptographic techniques. New technologies that further strengthen existing cybersecurity protections are needed.

Quantum cryptography provides a means of detecting and defeating an adversary who might try to intercept or attack the communications. Single photons are used to produce secure random numbers between users, and these random numbers are then used to authenticate and encrypt the grid control data and commands. Because the random numbers are produced securely, they act as cryptographic key material for data authentication and encryption algorithms.

At the heart of the quantum-secured communications system is a unique, miniaturized QC transmitter invention, known as a QKarD, that is five orders of magnitude smaller than any competing QC device. Jane Nordholt, the Los Alamos principal investigator, put it this way: "This project shows that quantum cryptography is compatible with electric-grid control communications, providing strong security assurances rooted in the laws of physics, without introducing excessive delays in data delivery."

A late-2012 demonstration at UIUC showed that quantum cryptography provides the necessary strong security assurances with latencies (typically 250 microseconds, including 120 microseconds to traverse the 25 kilometers of optical fiber connecting the two nodes) that are at least two orders of magnitude smaller than requirements. Further, the team’s quantum-secured communications system demonstrated that this capability could be deployed with only a single optical fiber to carry the quantum, single-photon communications signals; data packets; and commands. "Moreover, our system is scalable to multiple monitors and several control centers," said Richard Hughes, the co-principal investigator from Los Alamos.

The TCIPG cyber-physical test bed provides a realistic environment to explore cutting-edge research and prove emerging smart grid technology in a fully customizable environment. In this demonstration, high-fidelity power simulation was leveraged using the real-time digital simulator to enable hardware in the loop power simulation to drive real phasor measurement units (PMUs), devices, deployed on today's electric grid that monitor its operation.

"The simulator provides a mechanism for proving technology in real-world scenarios," said Tim Yardley, assistant director of test bed services. "We're not just using perfect or simulated data, so the results demonstrate true feasibility."

The power simulation was running a well-known power-bus model that was perturbed by introducing faults, which drove the analog inputs on the connected hardware PMU. The PMU then communicated via the standard protocol to the quantum cryptography equipment, which handled the key generation, communication and encryption/decryption of the connection traversing 25 kilometers of fiber. A phasor data concentrator then collected and visualized the data.

"This demonstration represents not only a realistic power model, but also leveraged hardware, software and standard communication protocols that are already widely deployed in the energy sector," said William H. Sanders, the Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering at UIUC and principal investigator for TCIPG. "The success of the demonstration emphasizes the power of the TCIPG cyber-physical test bed and the strength of the quantum cryptography technology developed by Los Alamos."

The Los Alamos team submitted 23 U. S. and foreign patent applications for the inventions that make quantum-secured communications possible. The Los Alamos Technology Transfer Division has already received two licensing inquiries from companies in the electric grid control sector, and the office plans an industry workshop for early 2013 when the team’s patents will be made available for licensing.

The Los Alamos team is seeking funding to develop a next-generation QKarD using integrated electro-photonics methods, which would be even smaller, more highly integrated, and open the door to a manufacturing process that would result in much lower unit costs.

NEW ADVANCE IN "SLOW LIGHT" MAY BRING INCREASED SPEEDS IN OPTICAL COMPUTING, TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Los Alamos National Laboratory.  Credit: Wikimedia Commons/DOE  

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
"Slow Light’ Advance Could Speed Optical Computing, Telecommunications
Metamaterials provide active control of slow-light devices
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Feb. 12, 2013—Wireless communications and optical computing could soon get a significant boost in speed, thanks to "slow light" and specialized metamaterials through which it travels.

Researchers have made the first demonstration of rapidly switching on and off "slow light" in specially designed mate¬rials at room temperature. This work opens the possibility to design novel, chip-scale, ultrafast devices for applications in terahertz wireless communications and all-optical computing.

Significance of the research

In slow light, a propagating light pulse is substantially slowed down, compared with the velocity of light in a vacuum. This is accomplished by the light’s interaction with the medium through which it is shining. Slow light has potential applications in telecommunications because it could lead to a more orderly traffic flow in networks.

Like cars slowing down or speeding up to negotiate an intersection, packets of information are better managed if their transmission speed is changeable. Another potential application is the storage of information carried by light pulses, leading to a potential all-optical computing system. Current semiconductor materials used in computing devices are reaching some of their limits, and an all-optical system would potentially enable improvements in size reduction and calculation speeds.

The effects of strong light-matter coupling used in slowing down light might create entangled photon pairs that lead to quantum computing capabilities beyond those of modern computers, the researchers say.

Giving classical optical structures a quantum twist

Electromagnetically induced transparency is a quantum interference effect that produces a sharp resonance with extremely low loss and dispersion. However, implementing electromagnetically induced transparency in chip-scale applications is difficult due to the demands of stable gas lasers and low-temperature environments. The key to success is the use of metamaterials, engineered artificial materials containing structures that are smaller than the wavelength of the waves they affect.

Researchers integrated photoconductive silicon into the metamaterial unit cell. This material enables a switching of the transparency resonance window through the excitation of ultrafast, femto-second optical pulses. This phenomenon causes an optically tunable group delay of the terahertz light. The "slow light" behavior can be controlled at an ultrafast time scale by integrating appropriate semiconductor materials with conventional metamaterial designs.

In this research, the medium is an active metamaterial that supports a sharp resonance, which leads to a rapid change in the refractive index of the medium over a small range of frequencies. This phenomenon causes a dramatic reduction in the velocity of terahertz light propagation. The resonance can be switched on and off on a time scale of a few pico-seconds. When the resonance transparency is on, the system produces slow light. When the resonance is off, the slow light behavior disappears. This on and off process happens on an ultrafast (pico-second) time scale when a femto-second laser pulse excites the metamaterial. Nature Communications published the research. Link to paper:


http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n10/full/ncomms2153.html

The research team

Researchers include Ranjan Singh of High Power Electrodynamics, Abdul K. Azad and Hou-Tong Chen of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Antoinette Taylor of Materials Physics and Applications, collaborators from Tianjin University, Oklahoma State University, and Imperial College, London. The U.S. Department of Energy supported the LANL research, which was performed, in part, at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, a DOE Office of Science user facility. The work supports the Laboratory’s global- and energy-security mission areas.

Additional information

Slow light is just that, light that has been slowed from the traditionally understood standard, 299,792,458 meters per second. While faster-than-light speeds are considered impossible, it is entirely reasonable to guide light through a material that slows or delays the motion of the photons as they move through the medium. The photons are absorbed and then re-emitted, slowing the transmission from one area to another, and in some experiments the light has been stopped altogether. The measurement of how much light is slowed in a material is known as its refractive index. In a vacuum, there is no delay. Through a diamond, with a refractive index of 2.4, the light lingers for a small time.

Metamaterials are assemblies of multiple individual elements fashioned from conventional microscopic materials arranged in periodic patterns. The precise shape, geometry, size, orientation and arrangement of the structures can affect waves of light in an unconventional manner, creating material properties that are unachievable with conventional materials.

Image caption: Schematic of active optical control of terahertz waves in electromagnetically induced transparency metamaterials.

About the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies

The Center for Nanoscale Materials is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers, premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located at DOE's Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories.

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY ON FASTER BIOMASS TO FUELS CONVERSION

Credit:  Los Alamos National Laboratory

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
New Process Speeds Conversion of Biomass to Fuels
Fuels synthesis insight can reduce costs and greenhouse gases

LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, February 7, 2013—Scientists made a major step forward recently towards transforming biomass-derived molecules into fuels. The team led by Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers elucidated the chemical mechanism of the critical steps, which can be performed under relatively mild, energy-efficient conditions. The journal Catalysis Science & Technology published the research.

Trash to Treasure

"Efficient conversion of non-food biomass into fuels and chemical feedstocks could reduce society’s dependence on foreign oil and ensure the long-term availability of renewable materials for consumer products," said John Gordon, one of the senior Los Alamos scientists on the project.

"Also, efficient conversion could decrease the production of greenhouse gases. However, current technologies to convert biomass into fuels require extreme conditions of high temperatures and high pressures, both of which make the conversion process prohibitively expensive."

The study provides important insight into a critical step in biomass fuels synthesis and it may enable the design of better, non-precious-metal catalysts and processes for large-scale transformation of biomass into fuels and commodity chemicals.

The Ring of Simplicity

For more than a century, chemists focused on a "more is better" approach, adding functionality to molecules, not removing it. For this breakthrough, however, researchers applied the opposite strategy and aimed for simplicity, opening up a component of the molecule to make it easier to transform. They perfected a method for "direct-ring opening" of the furan rings, which are made of four carbons and one oxygen atom, and that are ubiquitous in biomass-derived fuel precursors.

Opening these rings into linear chains is a necessary step in the production of energy-dense fuels, said Gordon, because these linear chains can then be reduced and deoxygenated into alkanes used in gasoline and diesel fuel. The reaction requires relatively mild conditions using the common reagent hydrochloric acid as a catalyst.

The researchers tested the process on several biomass-derived molecules, and they performed calculations to study the selectivity and mechanism of reaction. This information is key to designing better catalysts and processes for biomass conversion.

The research team

The Los Alamos researchers include Christopher Waidmann of Nuclear and Radiochemistry; John Gordon of Inorganic, Isotope and Actinide Chemistry; Aaron Pierpont, Enrique Batista, and Richard Martin of Physics and Chemistry of Materials; L. A. "Pete" Silks and Ruilian Wu of Bioenergy and Biome Sciences. The Los Alamos Laboratory Research and Development program funded the work.

Image caption: Artist’s conception of the process: Researchers open up a component of the biofuel molecule, called a furan ring, to make it easier to chemically alter. Opening these rings into linear chains is a necessary step in the production of energy-dense fuels, so these linear chains can then be converted into alkanes used in gasoline and diesel fuel. Image by Josh Smith, Los Alamos National Laboratory.

COBALT MAY REPLACE PRECIOUS METALS AS AN INDUSTRIAL CATALYST

Photo:  Platinum Necklace.  Credit:  U.S. Marshals Service.

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Cobalt Discovery Replaces Precious Metals as Industrial Catalyst
Transforming the chemistry of catalysis
LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, November 26, 2012—Cobalt, a common mineral, holds promise as an industrial catalyst with potential applications in such energy-related technologies such as the production of biofuels and the reduction of carbon dioxide. That is, provided the cobalt is captured in a complex molecule so it mimics the precious metals that normally serve this industrial role.

In work published Nov. 26 in the international edition of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists report the possibility of replacing the normally used noble metal catalysts with cobalt.
Catalysts are the parallel of the Philosopher’s Stone for chemistry. They cannot change lead to gold, but they do transform one chemical substance into another while remaining unchanged themselves. Perhaps the most familiar example of catalysis comes from automobile exhaust systems that change toxic fumes into more benign gases, but catalysts are also integral to thousands of industrial, synthetic, and renewable energy processes where they accelerate or optimize a mind-boggling array of chemical reactions. It’s not an exaggeration to say that without catalysts, there would be no modern industry.

But a drawback to catalysts is that the most effective ones tend to be literally precious. They are the noble metal elements such as platinum, palladium, rhodium, and ruthenium, which are a prohibitively expensive resource when required in large quantities. In the absence of a genuine Philosopher’s Stone, they could also become increasingly expensive as industrial applications increase worldwide. A push in sustainable chemistry has been to develop alternatives to the precious metal catalysts by using relatively inexpensive, earth-abundant metals. The chemical complexities of the more common metals have made this research a challenge, but the Los Alamos paper holds out hope that the earth-abundant metal cobalt can serve in place of its pricier relatives.

Cobalt, like iron and other transition metals in the Periodic Table, is cheap and relatively abundant, but it has a propensity to undergo irreversible reactions rather than emerging unchanged from chemical reactions as is required of an effective catalyst. The breakthrough by the Los Alamos team was to capture the cobalt atom in a complex molecule in such a way that it can mimic the reactivity of precious metal catalysts, and do so in a wide range of circumstances.

The findings of the Los Alamos team have major ramifications and suggest that cobalt complexes are rich with possibility for future catalyst development. Due to the high performance and low cost of the metal, the cobalt catalyst has potential applications in energy-related technologies such as the production of biofuels, and the reduction of carbon dioxide. It also has implications for organic chemistry, where hydrogenation is a commonly practiced catalytic reaction that produces important industrial chemical precursors.

The research was funded by the LANL Laboratory Directed Research and Development Early Career program. "Mild and Homogeneous Cobalt-Catalyzed Hydrogenation of C=C, C=O, and C=N Bonds." Angewandte Chemie International Edition. DOI: 10.1022/anie.201206051. Guoqi Zhang, Brian L. Scott, and Susan K. Hanson* Guoqi Zhang, Kalyan Vasudevan.

SPACE TRAVEL: FISSION REACTOR ENGINE



Bimodal Nuclear Thermal Rocket is a NASA version of nuclear fission reactor for a spacecraft.
Bimodal Nuclear Thermal Rockets conduct nuclear fission reactions similar to those safely employed at nuclear power plants including submarines. The energy is used to heat the liquid hydrogen propellant. Advocates of nuclear powered spacecraft point out that at the time of launch, there is almost no radiation released from the nuclear reactors. The nuclear-powered rockets are not used to lift off the Earth. Nuclear thermal rockets can provide great performance advantages compared to chemical propulsion systems. Nuclear power sources could also be used to provide the spacecraft with electrical power for operations and scientific instrumentation.  Credit:  NASA

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Researchers Test Novel Power System for Space Travel

Joint DOE and NASA team demonstrates simple, robust fission reactor prototype

LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, November 26, 2012—A team of researchers, including engineers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, has demonstrated a new concept for a reliable nuclear reactor that could be used on space flights.

The research team recently demonstrated the first use of a heat pipe to cool a small nuclear reactor and power a Stirling engine at the Nevada National Security Site’s Device Assembly Facility near Las Vegas. The Demonstration Using Flattop Fissions (DUFF) experiment produced 24 watts of electricity. A team of engineers from Los Alamos, the NASA Glenn Research Center and National Security Technologies LLC (NSTec) conducted the experiment.

Heat pipe technology was invented at Los Alamos in 1963. A heat pipe is a sealed tube with an internal fluid that can efficiently transfer heat produced by a reactor with no moving parts. A Stirling engine is a relatively simple closed-loop engine that converts heat energy into electrical power using a pressurized gas to move a piston. Using the two devices in tandem allowed for creation of a simple, reliable electric power supply that can be adapted for space applications.

Researchers configured DUFF on an existing experiment, known as Flattop, to allow for a water-based heat pipe to extract heat from uranium. Heat from the fission reaction was transferred to a pair of free-piston Stirling engines manufactured by Sunpower Inc., based in Athens Ohio. Engineers from NASA Glenn designed and built the heat pipe and Stirling assembly and operated the engines during the experiment. Los Alamos nuclear engineers operated the Flattop assembly under authorization from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

DUFF is the first demonstration of a space nuclear reactor system to produce electricity in the United States since 1965, and the experiment confirms basic nuclear reactor physics and heat transfer for a simple, reliable space power system.

"The nuclear characteristics and thermal power level of the experiment are remarkably similar to our space reactor flight concept," said Los Alamos engineer David Poston. "The biggest difference between DUFF and a possible flight system is that the Stirling input temperature would need to be hotter to attain the required efficiency and power output needed for space missions."

"The heat pipe and Stirling engine used in this test are meant to represent one module that could be used in a space system," said Marc Gibson of NASA Glenn. "A flight system might use several modules to produce approximately one kilowatt of electricity."

Current space missions typically use power supplies that generate about the same amount of electricity as one or two household light bulbs. The availability of more power could potentially boost the speed with which mission data is transmitted back to Earth, or increase the number of instruments that could be operated at the same time aboard a spacecraft.

"A small, simple, lightweight fission power system could lead to a new and enhanced capability for space science and exploration", said Los Alamos project lead Patrick McClure. "We hope that this proof of concept will soon move us from the old-frontier of Nevada to the new-frontier of outer space".

Los Alamos research on the project was made possible through Los Alamos’s Laboratory-Directed Research and Development Program (LDRD), which is funded by a small percentage of the Laboratory’s overall budget to invest in new or cutting-edge research. NASA Glenn and NSTec also used internal support to fund their contributions to the experiment.

"Perhaps one of the more important aspects of this experiment is that it was taken from concept to completion in 6 months for less than a million dollars," said Los Alamos engineer David Dixon. "We wanted to show that with a tightly-knit and focused team, it is possible to successfully perform practical reactor testing."

An animation of the new reactor concept can be seen on Los Alamos National Laboratory’s YouTube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KobRfGqlpGc&feature=youtu.be

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY GIVES OUT VENTURE ACCLERATION FUND AWARDS

Photo:  Los Alamos National Laboratory.  Credit:  LANL.

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
New Companies Get Boost from Los Alamos National Security
Venture Acceleration Fund awards help region’s businesses grow

LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, November 19, 2012—Two local biotech start ups, a water and power company and a hardware inventor are the latest recipients of $165,000 in Venture Acceleration Fund (VAF) awards from Los Alamos National Security, LLC.

Mustomo, Inc., IX Power, Synfolia, and Tape-Ease will receive funding to take their products and services to the next development level. Three of the four companies are commercializing technology and intellectual property developed by New Mexico’s national laboratories and educational institutions.

"Although the program was originally intended to commercialize Lab technologies, VAF frequently funds companies with no tie to LANL or research institutions," says David Pesiri, the Laboratory’s Technology Transfer Division leader. "This round of VAF funding represents a special opportunity to push national lab and research institution technology into the marketplace, and to build upon other tech transfer efforts such as Labstart."

Breast Cancer Detection Aided

Mustomo, Inc. of Los Alamos received $100,000 to commercialize novel LANL technology for breast cancer screening and detection. The ultrasound-based, three-dimensional tomography system has significant advantages over x-ray mammograms and ultrasound screenings in that it is safe, comfortable, high-resolution, and easy to administer. In conjunction with clinical trials at the University of New Mexico Medical Center, Mustomo will use its VAF award to complete an operator manual, procedural guide, quality assurance and test plans, and to implement on-site training and test result review. The company will also prepare a preliminary FDA filing to enter the marketplace.

Mustomo, Inc. is a spin off of LANL’s Labstart program, a joint partnership between Arch Venture Partners and Verge Fund that is under contract with LANL to help identify and create start-up companies.

"I am excited about and appreciate the support from VAF," says Denis O’Connor, CEO of Mustomo, Inc. "This grant will greatly enhance our ability to commercialize this cutting edge technology in breast cancer assessment developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory."

Powering Up

IX Power of Los Alamos received $30,000 to acquire a first customer for Trans-Ex, a software package developed at LANL to optimize electric power grid supply and delivery configuration. IX Power will partner with Local Power of Marshall, CA to identify candidate sites and market opportunities for renewable and efficiency deployments in San Francisco. The team includes six IX Power founders, led by CEO John R. (Grizz) Deal, former LANL Computer Research & Applications Group Leader Vance Faber, and former LANL scientist Jonathan Bradley. Gaspar Loren Toole of Los Alamos will provide technical assistance to the company through the New Mexico Small Business Assistance (NMSBA) program.

IX Power expects to expand its workforce from nine full-time employees to more than 100 employees in the next year. "The VAF grant is critical to our ability to successfully commercialize the TransEx technology," says John R (Grizz) Deal, IX Power’s chief executive officer. "This kind of shared risk, between public sector inventors and private sector marketers, is a unique and vital partnership and a model for other labs and public institutions."

Biodegradability Testing

Synfolia of Santa Fe received $20,000 to conduct materials and biodegradability testing for tailored tissue scaffolds that regenerate epidermal and bone tissue. The company has exclusive rights to commercialize technology that was developed jointly by the University of New Mexico and Sandia National Laboratories. The company’s bioengineered scaffolds improve upon products currently used for tissue generation because they use the patient’s own cells and degrade easily without the problems of inadequate supply. Synfolia’s team includes Elizabeth Dirk, Ph.D. of the University of New Mexico; Shawn Dirk, Ph.D. and Stephen P. Buerger, Ph.D. of Sandia National Laboratories; and Dr. Reza Shekarriz.

"The VAF is a valuable tool for early stage start-ups like Synfolia," says John Chavez, CEO of Synfolia. "The VAF process makes entrepreneurs focus on specific milestones that move them to the next level."

Measuring Up

Tape-Ease received $15,000 to manufacture and market its products through trade shows, merchandising, and video production. The woman-owned, Santa Fe-based company invented practical tools that attach to a standard one-inch tape measure, enabling accurate and quick measurements by a single person. In the past year, Tape-Ease secured a manufacturer and began distribution. Initial marketing resulted in a phenomenal response, prompting Tape-Ease to seek VAF support to capitalize on momentum. The project team includes founders Lisa and Linda Johnson, and partners Michael Rafter and Eldon Goates.

The VAF award came at the most opportune time for Tape-Ease, whose founders have personally funded the company to date. "The funding allowed us to accelerate our momentum in fulfilling orders and marketing our products," says Tape-Ease founder Linda Johnson. "By helping us attend the International Builders Show for the first time, VAF opened the door to distributors from all over the world. VAF has been a lifeline for Tape-Ease. We're so grateful!" About the Program Los Alamos National Security, LLC, manager of Los Alamos National Laboratory, invests $1 million per year in economic development through a program known as Los Alamos Connect. Los Alamos Connect promotes VAF and a variety of other business development programs. The VAF efforts have generated a $24 million return in the regional economy on a $2.46 million LANS investment and helped create or retain 48 jobs.

MUON IMAGING: LOOKING INSIDE THE FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI REACTORS



120316-N-TX154-352
YOKOSUKA, Japan (March 16, 2012) Members from the Japan Women's Association present Capt. David A. Owen, commanding officer of Fleet Activities Yokosuka, paper cranes as a thank you for the services rendered by Sailors during Operation Tomodachi one year ago. Operation Tomodachi was a humanitarian mission focused on aiding the people of Japan in the aftermath of the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck Fukushima Prefecture in early March of 2011. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Paul Kelly/Released)
　

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Tiny Travelers from Deep Space Could Assist in Healing Fukushima’s Nuclear Scar

Researchers examine use of cosmic-ray radiography on damaged reactor cores
LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, October 17, 2012—Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory have devised a method to use cosmic rays to gather detailed information from inside the damaged cores of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, which were heavily damaged in March 2011 by a tsunami that followed a great earthquake.

In a paper in Physical Review Letters, researchers compared two methods for using cosmic-ray radiography to gather images of nuclear material within the core of a reactor similar to Fukushima Daiichi Reactor No. 1. The team found that Los Alamos’ scattering method for cosmic-ray radiography was far superior to the traditional transmission method for capturing high-resolution image data of potentially damaged nuclear material.

"Within weeks of the disastrous 2011 tsunami, Los Alamos’ Muon Radiography Team began investigating use of Los Alamos’ muon scattering method to determine whether it could be used to image the location of nuclear materials within the damaged reactors," said Konstantin Borozdin of Los Alamos’ Subatomic Physics Group and lead author of the paper. "As people may recall from previous nuclear reactor accidents, being able to effectively locate damaged portions of a reactor core is a key to effective, efficient cleanup. Our paper shows that Los Alamos’ scattering method is a superior method for gaining high-quality images of core materials."

Muon radiography (also called cosmic-ray radiography) uses secondary particles generated when cosmic rays collide with upper regions of Earth’s atmosphere to create images of the objects that the particles, called muons, penetrate. The process is analogous to an X-ray image, except muons are produced naturally and do not damage the materials they contact.

Massive numbers of muons shower the earth every second. Los Alamos researchers found that by placing a pair of muon detectors in front of and behind an object, and measuring the degree of scatter the muons underwent as they interacted with the materials they penetrated, the scientists could gather detailed images. The method works particularly well with highly interfering materials (so-called "high Z" materials) such as uranium. Because the muon scattering angle increases with atomic number, core materials within a reactor show up more clearly than the surrounding containment building, plumbing and other objects. Consequently, the muon scattering method shows tremendous promise for pinpointing the exact location of materials within the Fukushima reactor buildings.

Using a computer model, the research team simulated a nuclear reactor with percentages of its core removed and placed elsewhere within the reactor building. They then compared the Los Alamos scattering method to the traditional transmission method. The simulation showed that passive observation of the simulated core over six weeks using the scattering method provided high-resolution images that clearly showed that material was missing from the main core, as well as the location of the missing material elsewhere in the containment building. In comparison, the transmission method was barely able to provide a blurry image of the core itself during the same six-week period.

"We now have a concept by which the Japanese can gather crucial data about what is going on inside their damaged reactor cores with minimal human exposure to the high radiation fields that exist in proximity to the reactor buildings," Borozdin said. "Muon images could be valuable in more effectively planning and executing faster remediation of the reactor complex."

In addition to their potential utility at Fukushima, muon radiography portals have been deployed to detect potential smuggling of clandestine nuclear materials. These detectors can noninvasively find even heavily shielded contraband in minutes without breaching a container, vehicle or other smuggling device. Los Alamos researchers pioneered the concept shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Other Los Alamos National Laboratory co-authors of the paper include Steven Greene, Edward "Cas" Milner, Haruo Miyadera, Christopher Morris and John Perry; and (former Los Alamos post-doctoral researcher) Zarija Lukic of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Cas Milner is credited by the team as the author of the original concept of applying muon imaging to Fukushima.

Los Alamos research on the project was made possible through Los Alamos’ Laboratory-Directed Research and Development Program (LDRD), which is funded by a small percentage of the Laboratory’s overall budget to invest in new or cutting-edge research. The U.S. Department of Energy supported contacts of the Los Alamos team with other research groups, including several Japanese institutions and the University of Texas.

EVOLUTIONARY THEORY AND DNA ANALYSIS



Photo caption: From left, Los Alamos scientists Joel Berendzen, Ben McMahon, Mira Dimitrijevic, Nick Hengartner and Judith Cohn.

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Evolutionary Theory, Web-Search Technology Combine for DNA Analysis

Bioinformatics breakthrough has clinical & environmental applications
LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, October 4, 2012—New software from Los Alamos National Laboratory called Sequedex uses evolutionary theory to swiftly identify short "reads" of DNA, calling out the specific organisms from which the DNA came and their likely activity.

"Sequedex makes it possible for a researcher to analyze data hot off a DNA sequencer using a laptop," said Joel Berendzen, a scientist on the project. "The tool characterizes whole communities of microorganisms such as those in the mouth in a matter of minutes."

Sequedex works like a web search engine, making exact matches between DNA sequences and a list of "keywords" called phylogenetic signatures, then placing any hits on the appropriate branch of the Tree of Life. Advantages over current methods include a factor of 250,000 in speed and the ability to work with pieces of DNA as short as 30 bases long.

The software, developed by Los Alamos scientists Joel Berendzen, Nicolas Hengartner, Judith Cohn, Mira Dimitrijevic and Benjamin McMahon, recognizes proteins from short DNA sequences, analyzing them both individually for phylogeny and function and collectively for biodiversity and environmental similarities.

"Sequedex is bioinformatics redesigned from the ground up," said Berendzen, "making use of the wealth of genomic data that has become available in the 20 years since the most commonly used algorithms were written."

Data analysis is widely perceived as a bottleneck preventing broader use of DNA sequencing for problems such as rapid clinical diagnoses of viral and bacterial diseases, genetic matchmaking between individual tumors and chemotherapy agents, and improved production methods for algal biofuels. A number of ways around this bottleneck have been proposed, including special computer hardware and farming out analysis to large numbers of computers on computing clouds.

The Sequedex team was originally tasked with investigating DNA analysis on the Laboratory’s Roadrunner supercomputer, but quickly realized that improvements in the algorithm made having so much hardware unnecessary. "They asked us to build a rocket ship," Berendzen said, "but instead we built a 10,000 mph motorcycle."

Sequedex software running on a single CPU core can analyze sequences at a rate of 6 billion DNA bases per hour. This rate is more than twice the speed of data generated by today’s fastest sequencing instruments, and it is also more than twice the rate of typical upload speeds to a cloud-computing site.

A journal article on the project, "Rapid Phylogenetic and Functional Classification of Short Genomic Fragments with Signature Peptides," was published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal BMC Research Notes.

Sequedex was recently announced as one of this years' winners of R&D Magazine’s "R&D 100" awards (http://www.rdmag.com/), one of four from Los Alamos National Laboratory and its partners. The project was funded with Laboratory Directed Research and Development dollars. A free demo version is available online at http://sequedex.lanl.gov/. The laboratory’s technology transfer office is actively seeking strategic partnership opportunities.

DNA sequencing came to prominence as a result of the Human Genome Project, which was completed in 2003 and found some 25,000 genes in the 3 billion chemical bases that make up the sequence of human DNA. The Human Genome Project arose out of research at Los Alamos and elsewhere in the U.S. Department of Energy into the effects of energy use on human health.

DNA sequencing technology is evolving at a dramatic rate. Costs have dropped by a factor of roughly 300,000 in the past 10 years and the resulting increased flows of sequence data have placed more stress on an already overburdened analysis process. The current most-widely-used piece of DNA analysis software, a package called the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST), was a refinement of software written by Los Alamos scientists Temple Smith and Michael Waterman in 1981.

HYDROLOGY AND CHANGES IN THE ARTIC LANDSCAPE

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

A team of scientists is working to understand how local changes in hydrology might bring about major changes to the Arctic landscape, including the possibility of a large-scale carbon release from thawing permafrost. Bryan Travis, an expert in fluid dynamics, is author of the Mars global hydrology numerical computer model, or MAGHNUM, used for calculating heat and fluid transport phenomena. (MAGHNUM was previously used to model hydrological phenomena under freezing conditions on other planets, including Mars.) Travis advanced the MAGHNUM software with a variety of improvements and additional components into a new program, called ARCHY, a comprehensive Arctic hydrology model. A LANL team's goal is to make ARCHY capable of accurately modeling Arctic topography, thawing, and erosion. Because it includes advective heat transport, ARCHY will help to predict how quickly and how extensively the Arctic permafrost will thaw.  Photo From:  Los Alamos National Laboratory.

NEUTRON CRYSTALLOGRAPHY AIDING DRUG DESIGN

File Photo:  Chemistry.  Credit:  Wikimedia. 

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Neutron Crystallography Aids Drug Design

Precisely tailored pharmaceuticals could reduce medical side effects



LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, October 9, 2012—Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have used neutron crystallography for the first time to determine the structure of a clinical drug in complex with its human target enzyme. Seeing the detailed structure of the bonded components provides insights into developing more effective drugs with fewer side effects for patients.

 

The atomic details of drug binding have been largely unknown due to the lack of key information on specific hydrogen atom positions and hydrogen bonding between the drug and its target enzyme. In this research, scientists used the drug acetazolamide (AZM) -- a sulfonamide drug that has been used for decades to treat a variety of diseases such as glaucoma, altitude sickness, and epilepsy. But when the drug binds with the wrong form (called an isoform) of the target enzyme for the disease, it can produce unpleasant side effects in patients (so called "off-target" drug binding).

 

Enter neutron crystallography – the use of neutron scattering to paint a picture of these bonds.

 

By providing precise information on hydrogen bonding between target enzymes and the treatment drugs (carbon anhydrase II targeted by AZM in this study), the research enables improvements in targeted binding with fewer side effects. Neutron crystallography offers a new and unique insight into these details, providing imagery of the exact structures involved.

 

Scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory collected the data at the Protein Crystallography Station using neutrons from the accelerator at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, LANSCE. The Journal of the American Chemical Society published the research, "Neutron Diffraction of Acetazolamide-Bound Human Carbonic Anhydrase II Reveals Atomic Details of Drug Binding".

 

Researchers include Zoë Fisher and Mary Jo Waltman of the Los Alamos Bioenergy and Environmental Science group, Andrey Kovalevsky formerly of Los Alamos and currently at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Robert McKenna, David Silverman and Mayank Aggarwal of the University of Florida.

 

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science funds the Protein Crystallography Station at LANSCE. Zoë Fisher received partial support through a Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Early Career Award.

 

 

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY MARKS 20 YEARS WITHOUT ONE

Divider Being Hoisted.  Credit:  Los Alamos National Laboratory

FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos National Laboratory Marks 20 Years Without Full-Scale Nuclear Testing

LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, September 26, 2012—Two decades ago the last full-scale underground test of a nuclear weapon was conducted by Los Alamos National Laboratory at the Nevada Test Site.

The test, code named "Divider," was detonated on Sept. 23, 1992 as the last of an eight-test series called "Julin."

The test had an announced yield less than the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT. The purpose of the test, also announced at the time, was "to ensure the safety of U.S. deterrent forces."

Divider was the last of 1,030 nuclear tests carried out by the U.S. The first nuclear test, Trinity, also conducted by Los Alamos, took place in southern New Mexico 47 years earlier on July 16, 1945.

Early in September of 1992, Congress adopted the Hatfield-Exon-Levin amendment to the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill calling for a nine-month moratorium on nuclear testing. In 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev unilaterally declared a halt on all Soviet nuclear tests. Because of this, Los Alamos scientists were well aware that Divider might be the last U.S. test for a while, though they did not envision a future completely without testing.

Los Alamos physicist Gary Wall was part of the two-person design team for the Divider test. "We knew there was a short period of time to conduct a few tests before the moratorium took effect," said Wall, "so there was a lot of discussion surrounding the importance of the last tests. Of course we still believed there would be many more than there were."

Shortly after the Divider test, the Energy and Water bill including the Hatfield-Exon-Levin amendment was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush mandating the nine-month moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing, a mandate that has been extended by every subsequent U.S. President into the present day.

"Once the moratorium went into effect," said Wall, "there were many high-level discussions about what kind of science program we would build to take care of the stockpile without testing — this ramped up very quickly once it was clear the moratorium was serious." These discussions led to what was eventually called the Stockpile Stewardship Program.

"Over the past 20 years, the United States has been able to innovate and develop the tools we need to keep our stockpile safe, secure, and effective without underground testing," said NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino. "We have the world’s leading scientific facilities, the world’s fastest computers, and the world’s brightest minds working to ensure that we never again have to perform nuclear explosive testing on U.S. nuclear weapons."

"Because of the talent, intellect, creativity, and determination of the scientists, engineers, and technicians at Los Alamos, and across the NNSA's nuclear enterprise, we have been able to deliver on the promise of Stockpile Stewardship for 20 years without full-scale testing," said Laboratory Director Charlie McMillan. "It is our most important job, one that will continue well into the future."

The Stockpile Stewardship Program carried out by scientists and weapons experts at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and the Nevada National Security Site (formerly the Nevada Test Site) has significantly advanced the nation’s ability to understand the stockpile without nuclear explosive testing through analysis of legacy data, new data from sub-critical experiments, supercomputer modeling and simulation, and other non-nuclear experiments.

Facilities and capabilities at Los Alamos that have enabled the successes of Stockpile Stewardship include the Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT) facility, the Proton Radiography facility, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research facility, the Plutonium facility, and a wide variety of dynamic experiments facilities.

Computing advancements have include the development of massively parallel computers like the Connection Machines CM-5 and the "Q" supercomputer — and the more modern computing "clusters" like Roadrunner (the first to reach a million billion calculations per second in 2008) and the Cielo and Luna supercomputers now shouldering the bulk of classified, weapons-related computing at Los Alamos.

According to Wall, data from the Divider test is still applicable today. "Divider was a rousing success," he said, "it clearly demonstrated a concept that remains viable for future stockpile options."

MAJOR PROBE LAUNCH TO STUDY RADIATION BELT STORMS

The identical Radiation Belt Storm Probes will follow similar orbits that will take them through both the inner and outer radiation belts. The highly elliptical orbits range from a minimum altitude of approximately 373 miles (600 kilometers) to a maximum altitude of approximately 23,000 miles (37,000 kilometers). PHOTO CREDIT: NASA

　
FROM: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos Provides HOPE for Radiation Belt Storm Probes

Spacecraft pair to explore mysterious region where other satellites fear to tread

LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, August 30,2012—Los Alamos National Laboratory expertise in radiation detection and shielding is poised to help a national team of scientists better understand a mysterious region that can create hazardous space weather near our home planet.

The Helium Oxygen Proton Electron (HOPE) analyzer is one of a suite of instruments that was successfully launched today as part of the Radiation Belt Storm Probe mission—an effort by NASA and the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory to gain insight into the Sun’s influence on Earth and near-Earth space by studying our planet’s radiation belt.

The radiation belt—also known as the Van Allen belt in honor of its discoverer, James Van Allen—is a donut shaped soup of charged particles that surrounds Earth and occupies the inner region of our planet’s Magnetosphere. The outer region of the belt is comprised of extremely high-energy electrons, a shower of tiny, negatively charged bullets if you will, that can easily pierce the skin of spacecraft and knock out their electrical components. Because of these hazards, spacecraft routinely avoid the region.

"Today we are boldly going where no spacecraft ever wants to go," said plasma physicist Geoffrey Reeves of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Intelligence and Space Research Division. "We know we’re going into the riskiest of environments, so we’ve taken the greatest steps ensure the satellites can complete their mission."

Combined with its inner region of energetic protons and electrons, the Radiation Belt is thought to be a product of cosmic rays and charged particles from the Sun carried toward Earth by the solar wind. The energy of particles within the belt constantly changes, and scientists have sought for decades to understand the mechanisms underlying these fluctuations.

Some space scientists originally thought the intensity of the radiation belts was fairly predictable. Conventional thought assumed that radiation energy levels within the belt increased when the belt was hammered by a large solar storm. However, recent observations have shown that radiation energy intensifies only about half the time after a storm interacts with the belt; in fact, about one-quarter of the time, energy within the belt actually decreases on the heels of a solar drubbing, Reeves said.

"We now know that big storms do not necessarily create large amounts of radiation," he said.

Understanding the radiation belt environment and its variability has extremely important practical applications in the areas of spacecraft operations, spacecraft and spacecraft system design, and mission planning and astronaut safety.

To better observe the complex processes in the radiation belts, the RBSP mission is sending a pair of probes to circle the Earth. The probes will orbit at different speeds, allowing researchers to see subtle energy changes from dual vantage points on much shorter time scales than anything available from Earth’s surface.

The Los-Alamos-designed HOPE instrument is part of a subset of instruments aboard the craft that will directly measure near-Earth space radiation particles to understand the physical processes that control the acceleration, global distribution, and variability of radiation belt electrons and ions. One of the things that makes HOPE unique is the instrument’s ability to measure the more subtle, low-energy particles (electrons, hydrogen, and helium and oxygen ions) while under intense fire from the radiation belts’ high-energy particles.

"It’s like measuring the smallest, slowest raindrops in the eyewall of a hurricane," said Herb Funsten, principal investigator for HOPE instrument and chief engineer for Los Alamos’ Intelligence and Space Research Division. "This is a tremendously difficult measurement. We detect atoms and electrons one at a time, and we sort the atoms by their weight. We have to make sure that the high-energy electron bullets that penetrate the instrument walls don’t mess up our measurements."

The ability to successfully design and build an instrument to provide precise measurements under demanding high-energy conditions not only aids the RBSP mission, but can provide useful expertise for future intelligence applications as well.

A dozen instruments aboard the two probes will help unravel mysteries of the Van Allen Belt, but HOPE will be one of the last of the group to switch on. Because of HOPE’s sensitivity to contamination, scientists will give the spacecraft time to complete its thruster firings, and for any remaining trapped gas in the spacecraft and instrument to dissipate before HOPE begins taking measurements.

"We’ll wait for the probe to shed the rest of its spacecraft body odor before we turn on," Reeves said. "Then, all the instruments will work together to solve the radiation belt puzzle. Ultimately we want to make life better here on the ground by making sure all satellite keep working the way they are supposed to."

The RBSP mission is slated to continue for two years. Los Alamos scientists are hoping to begin having preliminary data to share with other space scientists by the end of the year if the mission experiences no complications.

　

ADDITIONAL STORY
FROM: U.S. AIR FORCE 45th Space Wing Supports NASA’s Radiation Belt Storm Probes Launch
8/30/2012 - CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, Fla. -- The U.S. Air Force's 45th Space Wing provided flawless Eastern Range support for the successful launch of the NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes on an Atlas V rocket Aug. 30.

The launch was designed to study the Earth's Van Allen Radiation Belts and probe the influences of the Sun, according to Col. Robert Pavelko, vice commander of the 45th Space Wing.

"Understanding the radiation belt has important practical applications in the areas of spacecraft operations, design and mission planning -- all key to the mission of Air Force Space Command," said Col. Pavelko.

The launch occurred at 4:05 a.m. (EDT) from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

A combined team of military, government civilians and contractors from across the 45th Space Wing provided vital support to the RBSP mission, including weather forecasts, launch and range operations, security, safety and public affairs.

The wing also provided its vast network of radar, telemetry, optical and communications instrumentation to facilitate a safe launch on the Eastern Range.

This was the vice commander's first time serving as the Launch Decision Authority and he said he was thoroughly impressed by the preparation of the entire Eastern Range team to "make it happen."

"It's exhilarating to join so many gifted, hard-working teammates -- military, government civilians, and contractors -- all integral to demonstrating the 45th Space Wing is 'The World's Premier Gateway to Space!'" said Col. Pavelko.

Members of the Wing were involved throughout the process of getting the RBSP into orbit.

"What most people don't see is the amount of behind-the-scenes work that goes on among all our mission partners," said 1st. Lt. Tatiana Cornier, a member of the 5th Space Launch Squadron and on-console Atlas V flight commander for the RBSP mission.

"People around the world and here at the Space Coast see the liftoff, which is definitely my favorite part," she said, "but they don't always see all the heavy lifting that goes on prior to launch day to ensure another successful mission. It's awe-inspiring and I'm honored to be a part of this world-class team," she said.

The mission of the 45th Space Wing is one team...delivering assured space launch, range, and combat capabilities for the Nation