See below. 

Emergency personnel responding to the scene of a terrorist release of chemical or biological warfare agents could become victims. If they wait to evaluate, though, an agent could spread and cause even more widespread casualties. The solution may be a foam created at DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories that begins neutralizing both chemical and biological agents in minutes. Because it is not harmful to people, it could be dispensed on the disaster scene immediately, even before casualties are evacuated. In laboratory tests at Sandia, the foam destroyed simulants of the most worrisome chemical agents (VX, mustard, and soman) and killed a simulant of anthrax—the toughest known biological agent. 
 

A collaboration of physicists from DOE’s Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and the Department of Defense’s Naval Research Laboratory recently launched an experiment to study exotic celestial objects. Part of the Unconventional Stellar Aspect (USA), the experimental telescope will observe bright X-ray sources, including black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs and other phenomena not observable from Earth-based laboratories. USA will also contribute to applied science and environmental science. It will use X-ray sources to test new approaches to satellite navigation and to conduct the first tomographic survey of Earth’s atmosphere, and test new concepts for making spacecraft computers more reliable. 
 

Grout isn’t just for tile anymore

Buried waste is harbored underground at Superfund Sites around the country, awaiting remediation and posing a threat of further contamination. Reseachers at DOE’s Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, led by engineer Guy G. Loomis, injected grout into buried waste to stabilize it in the soil and prevent subsurface migration. The process created a solid in-ground monolith that physically and chemically stabilized the contamination and prevented leaching from natural water flow. A different, paraffin-based grout agglomerated contamination-bearing dust particles for subsequent dust-free waste removal. Injection grouting stabilizes buried waste for storage or removal, Loomis said, at a fraction of the cost of current remediation schemes. 
 

Research at DOE’s Ames Laboratory has led to a better understanding of the solidification process of neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets and the role of alloying additions. This knowledge may aid manufacturers in producing stronger magnets. As they studied the solidification process, the researchers discovered key aspects that control the microstructural development of Nd-Fe-B magnets. Additionally, they found that the use of select, minor alloying elements increased the strength of the magnets while reducing the heat-treatment time and the number of processing steps. The researchers say their findings should enable manufacturers to lower their production costs, thereby increasing the commercial viability of the magnets.
 

Four experiments at DOE’s Jefferson Lab are challenging the conventional wisdom that the proton’s charge and magnetic moment are equal. Researchers have found that the quark-carried charge distribution within a proton is larger than its magnetic distribution. Currently, the reason for this dispariy is not known or understood. While the findings don’t appear to challenge the basic tenets of current quantum chromodynamics theory, the theory can’t yet account for whatever underlying mechanism is responsible for the difference in charge and magentic moment. Additional experiments are scheduled to be conducted at Jefferson Lab in the coming months. 
 

Proteins are born resembling strings of beads and fold to become brain, blood, biceps, and bone. But incomplete folds cause disabling diseases like Alzheimer's and "mad cow" syndrome. They also cause respiration and locomotion failures - aims of biowarfare—because protein functions can’t be fully carried out. Now DOE's Sandia National Laboratories has created the first successful computational model to capture the process of one protein interfering with the folding of another. The results will help laboratory scientists understand the mechanisms by which incomplete folds occur, in order to prevent them, a step described by principal researcher Sorin Istrail as “a step toward successful protein engineering.” 
 

The world’s sharpest electron microscope image of a crystal was recorded at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory using the Z-contrast scanning transmission electron microcope. The image of a silicon crystal has double the resolution of typical transmission electron microcope images. The image was obtained by Steve Pennycook, a physicist in ORNL’s Solid State Division, and Peter Nellist, a former ORNL postdoctoral scientist now at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. In their image, columns of silicon atoms only 0.78 angstroms apart can be seen. By contrast, typical transmission electron microscopes under the same conditions can image individual atoms no closer than 1.6 angstroms.