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Carbon foam beats the heat
Faster laptop computers and better aerodynamics in automobiles could
result from the invention of a carbon foam material developed at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This
material is a
patented carbon foam with thermal conductivity equivalent to aluminum at
one-fifth its weight. Because of its superior heat transfer
characteristics, thiscarbon foam could allow auto designers to place the
radiator
somewhere other than at the car's front end. It could also displace heavy cooling fans, metallic fins and heat sinks in electronics. The material is licensed to Poco Graphite of Decatur, Texas.
Fermilab neutrino oscillation experiment gets help from "Teletubbies"
A "value engineering" session produced a time-and-money-saving design change for the MiniBooNE neutrino experiment at DOE's Fermilab: the "Teletubby" electronics room. Veteran Fermilab engineer Tom Pawlak had recently baby-sat with his grandchildren, watching TV's Teletubbies romp about on a mound of earth, emerging from a circular underground playroom. Pawlak proposed a circular electronics room under a mound of earth atop the MiniBooNE detector. The scientists would have a huge open space for their electronics, replacing the cramped original design. MiniBooNE will search for neutrino oscillations, seeking to confirm results from an earlier experiment at DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Laser glazing saves rails, environment
The high costs railroad companies pay due to energy losses from friction and friction-induced rail cracking can be greatly reduced by using a process called laser glazing, according to research at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory. When steel rails are laser glazed, trains travel on them with significantly reduced friction. "In addition to railroad rails and wheels, the process can be applied to many other steel surfaces, such as bearings and gears, where reduced friction and wear are important," said Argonne scientist Ron DiMelfi. Railroad companies estimate reducing rail-wheel friction could save $56 million per year in fuel and rail replacement costs.
New method for making optical photonic crystals
Using a novel ceramic technique, DOE's Ames Laboratory is creating colloidal optical photonic crystals from an inexpensive, non-toxic mixture of polystyrene microspheres and a titania suspension slurry. The colloidal crystals possess a periodic structure resembling a honeycomb and have a photonic bandgap—a range of forbidden frequencies within which a specific electromagnetic wavelength is blocked and light is reflected. Three-dimensional photonic crystals that operate at optical wavelengths have captured the fancy of the research community because of their potential for controlling and manipulating light in applications such as light-emitting diodes, micro-fabricated lasers and optical switches for telecommunications.
Vigabatrin promises new 'low' for heroin 'highs'
For the first time, a drug has been shown to block heroin-induced "highs" in animals' brains. DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory scientists reported [Synapse, 34, 11 (1999)] that in freely moving animals, the antiepilepsy drug vigabatrin abolishes the "high" effects of not only heroin, but also of alcohol on brain dopamine, and it significantly inhibits the "high" of methamphetamine. These data extend Brookhaven's earlier findings on vigabatrin's blocking cocaine and nicotine "highs" in animals. Brookhaven and Boston University also showed that vigabatrin blocks heroin self-administration in laboratory animals. Brookhaven research now focuses on vigabatrin's potential as an alternative to methadone for heroin addiction.
Working to save the nation's watersheds
Protecting the nation's lakes, streams and rivers requires managing massive amounts of data on variables as changeable as the seasons themselves. DOE's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, the Environmental Protection Agency and Utah State University have formalized a cooperative working relationship that will foster collaborative research and information exchange about watershed management. The new partners will focus on improving systems like the EPA's BASINS program to help decision-makers such as watershed advisory groups manage myriad stakeholder interests. BASINS integrates hydrologic, water quality, climatic, physical and socioeconomic data. The goal is to create regional data sets and to address "margin of safety" issues.
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Love of animals became love of planets
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Seran Gibbard
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As a youth, Seran Gibbard originally wanted to become a veterinarian because she loved animals.
But along the way, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher changed her mind after watching the PBS Cosmos series with Carl Sagan.
"I'd never been particularly interested in astronomy, but when I was in high school and saw the Cosmos television series, I found it fascinating," Gibbard recalls.
Now it's Gibbard who is studying the stars and the planets.
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Titan
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Most recently, she led a team from DOE's Livermore Lab and the University of California campuses at Los Angeles and Berkeley that captured the best images ever taken of Saturn's moon, Titan, using the world's largest telescope, the 10-meter Keck on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
Those images, with approximately twice the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope, revealed a complex surface that may be home to icy landforms and frigid hydrocarbon seas.
Results of the team's research appeared in the July issue of the planetary-science journal Icarus.
The blurring of the Earth's atmosphere was overcome using "speckle interferometry," a technique whereby hundreds of short, turbulence-freezing snapshots are computer-processed together.
Gibbard teamed with Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center and Eliot Young of the Southwest Research Institute to convert these images into a map of surface features. They removed light scattered in Titan's atmosphere to produce an image uncontaminated by haze.
"These models give the first quantitative map of Titan's surface. The bright region shaped somewhat like a rubber duck seems to be made of a mixture of rock and ice," Gibbard said.
Gibbard, who obtained a BA in physics from Johns Hopkins University and her Ph.D. in planetary science from the University of Arizona, has been a researcher at Livermore's Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics for three years.
Submitted by DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory |
