Tag: Los Alamos

SolarWinds Hides List of High-Profile Customers After Devastating Hack

SolarWinds has removed a list of high-profile clients from its website in the wake of a massive breach, “suggesting the company may be trying to obscure its clients in an effort to protect them from bad publicity,” reports The Verge. From the report: The list of vulnerable companies is much smaller than SolarWinds’ overall client list, so simply appearing on the…

Evidence Builds That an Early Mutation Made the Pandemic Harder to Stop

As the coronavirus swept across the world, it picked up random alterations to its genetic sequence. Like meaningless typos in a script, most of those mutations made no difference in how the virus behaved. But one mutation near the beginning of the pandemic did make a difference, multiple new findings suggest, helping the virus spread more easily from person to person…

A Volunteer Supercomputer Team is Hunting for Covid Clues

The world’s fastest computer is now part of “a vast supercomputer-powered search for new findings pertaining to the novel coronavirus’ spread” and “how to effectively treat and mitigate it,” according to an emerging tech journalist at Nextgov. It’s part of a consortium currently facilitating over 65 active research projects, for which “Dozens of national and international members are volunteering free compute…

Shock-Dissipating Fractal Cubes Could Forge High-Tech Armor

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Tiny, 3-D printed cubes of plastic, with intricate fractal voids built into them, have proven to be effective at dissipating shockwaves, potentially leading to new types of lightweight armor and structural materials effective against explosions and impacts. “The goal of the work is to manipulate the wave interactions resulting from a shockwave,” said…

ORNL, LANL-developed quantum technologies go the distance

For the second year in a row, a team from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge and Los Alamos national laboratories led a demonstration hosted by EPB, a community-based utility and telecommunications company serving Chattanooga, Tennessee. …

The exceptional origin of EUV light in hot tin plasma

Extreme ultraviolet light (EUV light) does not naturally occur on Earth, but it can be produced. In nanolithography machines, EUV light is generated using an immensely hot tin plasma. Researchers at ARCNL, in close collaboration with the American Los Alamos National Laboratory, have unraveled how such a plasma emits EUV light at the atomic level, and have made unexpected discoveries, reporting…

Scientists Say a Now-Dominant Strain of the Coronavirus Appears To Be More Contagious Than Original

Scientists have identified a new strain of the coronavirus that has become dominant worldwide and appears to be more contagious than the versions that spread in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory. From a report: The new strain appeared in February in Europe, migrated quickly to the…

Colloidal quantum dot laser diodes are just around the corner

Los Alamos scientists have incorporated meticulously engineered colloidal quantum dots into a new type of light emitting diodes (LEDs) containing an integrated optical resonator, which allows them to function as lasers. These novel, dual-function devices clear the path towards versatile, manufacturing-friendly laser diodes. The technology can potentially revolutionize numerous fields from photonics and optoelectronics to chemical sensing and medical diagnostics. …

Nuclear Reactor For Mars Outpost Could Be Ready To Fly By 2022

A nuclear power system that could one day provide juice to colonies on Mars is closer to being ready than previously expected. According to project team members, the Kilopower experiment fission reactor could be ready for its first in-space trial by 2022. Space.com reports: A flight test is the next big step for the Kilopower experimental fission reactor, which aced a…