Tuesday, November 29, 2011

ORNL's Amit Goyal receives E.O. Lawrence Award

Lab Manager Magazine) Oak Ridge National Laboratory materials scientist and Corporate Fellow Amit Goyal has been named a winner of the Department of Energy's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award honoring U.S. scientists and engineers for exceptional contributions in research and development supporting DOE and its mission...11/29

Need for new magnet materials drives research

(Windpower) creates an opportunity for a research team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Minnesota. The goal is to create a recipe for a replacement that doesn’t use scarce ingredients. The prospect of not having enough rare earth elements such as neodymium and dysprosium for magnets looms large for industries that need them...11/27

Previous ORNL Stories

DOE

Nuclear Systems Powering a Mission to Mars

(DOE Press Release) Radioisotope Power Systems, a strong partnership between the Energy Department's Office of Nuclear Energy and NASA, has been providing the energy for deep space exploration...11/28

National

States face bleak economic forecast, report says

(Wall Street Journal) States are caught in a fiscal vise as weak economic growth, dwindling federal help and increasing appeals from hard-pressed local governments squeeze their budgets...11/29

East Tennessee

Bear rescuers aiding record number of orphaned cubs

(Knoxville News Sentinel) Appalachian Bear Rescue already has logged a record-breaking year. But for this nonprofit, that's not necessarily great news...11/28

Conference in Knoxville to study new tree threats

(AP) A conference this week at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville will examine how to deal with two new threats to trees...11/19

energy & science policy

Senators Urge Continued Support for DOE Exascale Computing Initiative in FY 2013

(AIP) ...The Office of Management and Budget officially responds to the draft budget requests of federal departments and agencies, in a process known as the “passback.” Between now and the end of January, OMB will work with the departments and agencies in the development of a federal budget request that President Barack Obama will send to Congress in early February...11/28

Inside Energy Extra

11/28 A daily report on U.S. energy policy
[ORNL users only]
- FutureGen group aims to buy power plant
- More Deepwater Horizon charges loom
- Power sector ready for EPA rules: study
- Plan would speed leasing on Indian lands

science & technology

Scientists make the 'perfect' foam

(Nature) ...'Perfect' here means the lowest-energy configuration of packed bubbles of equal size. This is a compromise between the surface area of the bubbles and the stability of the many interlocking faces of the polyhedral bubbles in the foam...11/28

New technique puts chemistry breakthroughs on the fast track

(Physorg.com) The researchers report this month in the journal Science a technique to accomplish "accelerated serendipity" by using robotics to perform more than 1,000 chemical reactions a day with molecules never before combined...11/28

Climate Sensitivity to Carbon Dioxide More Limited Than Extreme Projections, Research Shows

(Science Daily) A new study suggests that the rate of global warming from doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide may be less than the most dire estimates of some previous studies -- and, in fact, may be less severe than projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2007...11/24