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(PhysOrg) Industrial users are starting to eye the potential of neutron science for solving problems that can't be solved in any other way. At the same time, the Spallation Neutron Source and High Flux Isotope Reactor neutron science facilities are exploring ways to woo such users and to make a match of it, to the benefit of both. "The advantages of neutrons to study materials are the same for industrial researchers and academic researchers: they can see light elements, study magnetic structures, penetrate big samples," said Thomas Proffen, a group leader in ORNL's Neutron Sciences Directorate....9/22 |
(R & D Magazine) ORNL's Volker Urban and colleagues at Technical University Aachen in Germany noticed the reverse piezoelectric effect—defined as creating a mechanical strain by applying an electrical voltage—while conducting fundamental research on polymers....9/22 |
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DOE
(DOE Press Release) Collegiate teams featuring over 4,000 students from around the world have descended on the National Mall's West Potomac Park to showcase the highly energy efficient solar-powered houses they created for the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2011....9/22
(Knoxville News Sentinel) The Living Light house is UT's submission to this year's Department of Energy-sponsored solar decathlon...9/23
State & Regional
(NPR) When Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, announced earlier this week that he was stepping down from the number three position in the Senate GOP leadership, his move got the rumor mill going....9/22 |
National
(Washington Post) Washington lurched toward another shutdown crisis after the late-night vote as Democrats in the Senate immediately vowed to reject the short-term funding bill....9/23
East Tennessee
(WBIR-TV) In July, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar approved preliminary plans for a new Oak Ridge national park. That site would be one of three with relations to the Manhattan project of World War II....9/22
(Tennessean) The Tennessee Valley Authority's inspector general testified Thursday that he stands by his report that criticized the utility for its December 2008 coal ash spill....9/23 |
(Science) If it's true, it will mark the biggest discovery in physics in the past half-century: Elusive, nearly massless subatomic particles called neutrinos appear to travel just faster than light, a team of physicists in Europe reports. If so, the observation would wreck Einstein's theory of special relativity, which demands that nothing can travel faster than light....9/22
(PhysOrg) About 3.8 billion years ago, Earth was teeming with unicellular life. A little more than 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth was a ball of vaporous rock. And somewhere in between, the first organisms spontaneously arose....9/23
(USA Today) The images in the thriller Contagion may be delivered with Hollywood flair, but they also have a ring of truth to those on the medical front lines....9/22