UT football coach helps ORNL kick off United Way campaign

(Oak Ridge Today) University of Tennessee football coach Butch Jones helped Oak Ridge National Laboratory kick off this year’s United Way campaign on Monday morning...6/19

Researchers drive towards cheaper fuel cells for electric cars

(PhysOrg) A million electric cars could be on roads across North America before the end of the decade with the help of research by the United States Department of Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Waterloo...Other members of the team led by the Los Alamos National Laboratory are Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Rochester and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, along with industrial partners - IRD Fuel Cells Inc. and General Motors Corporation...6/18

No. 2 ranking doesn't dim Titan's luster

(Knoxville News Sentinel) As expected, the Tianhe-2, a supercomputer developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, is now the world’s fastest supercomputer...6/19

Aero/Astro team awarded funds for DiaMonD Center

(MIT News) A team co-led by MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department Professor Karen Willcox has been awarded a $12.5-million grant by the Department of Energy to create the multi-institutional DiaMonD Center....The center is co-led by Professor Omar Ghattas of the University of Texas at Austin, and includes principal investigators from Florida State University, Colorado State University, Stanford University, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory...6/18

Previous ORNL Stories

DOE

Massive Electromagnet To Be Moved From New York To Chicago

(RedOrbit) ...The 50-foot-wide, circular electromagnet will be carefully moved in one piece from its current home in New York to the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois, where it will become part of the Muon g-2 experiment...6/17

East Tennessee

Pilot guilty plea: Former regional sales manager admits to mail fraud

(Knoxville News Sentinel) A third Pilot employee has pleaded guilty to a federal fraud charge. Kevin Clark admitted to one count of mail fraud in U.S. District Court in Knoxville. Clark worked as regional sales manager for Knoxville-based Pilot from 2008 to 2011...6/18

National

Karzai suspends talks with U.S. over Taliban move

(USA Today) The Afghan president on Wednesday suspended talks with the United States on a new security deal to protest the way his government was being left out of initial peace negotiations with the Taliban meant to find a way to end the nearly 12-year war...6/19

NSA: 'Over 50' Terror Plots Foiled by Data Dragnets

(ABC News) The director of the National Security Administration today told Congress that more than 50 potential terrorist attacks have been thwarted by two controversial programs tracking more than a billion phone calls and vast swaths of Internet data each day...6/18

science & technology

Study Finds the Sweet Spot -- And the Screw-Ups -- That Make or Break Environmental Collective Actions

(Science Daily) Sustainability programs are a Goldilocks proposition -- some groups are too big, some are too small, and the environment benefits when the size of a group of people working to save it is just right...6/17

Small Dam Construction to Reduce Greenhouse Emissions Is Causing Ecosystem Disruption

(Science Daily) Researchers conclude in a new report that a global push for small hydropower projects, supported by various nations and also the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, may cause unanticipated and potentially significant losses of habitat and biodiversity...6/18

Making memories: Practical quantum computing moves closer to reality

(PhysOrg) Researchers at the University of Sydney and Dartmouth College have developed a new way to design quantum memory, bringing quantum computers a step closer to reality. The results will appear June 19 in the journal Nature Communications...6/19

Out there

Mystery of Death Valley's 'Sailing Stones' Solved

(LiveScience) or years, scientists have been puzzled by the mysterious "sailing stones" of Death Valley. Located in a remote area of California's Death Valley National Park, the heavy stones appear to move across the dried lake bed known as Racetrack Playa, leaving a trail behind them in the cracked mud...6/17