Science

NASA: Total Solar Eclipse Monday, Aug. 21

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Total solar eclipse Aug. 21. Courtesy/NASA

NASA News:

All of North America will be treated Monday, Aug. 21, to an eclipse of the sun. Anyone within the path of totality can see one of nature’s most awe inspiring sights … a total solar eclipse.

This path, where the moon will completely cover the sun and the sun’s tenuous atmosphere – the corona – can be seen, will stretch from Salem, Ore. to Charleston, S.C. Observers outside this path will still see a partial solar eclipse where the moon covers part of the sun’s disk.

NASA created this website (link) to provide a guide Read More

NASA Contracts With University Of Alabama At Birmingham To Develop New Orbiting Hardware

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This conceptual drawing of Iceberg shows the modular nature of the units. Unlike MELFI’s permanent structure, these units can be removed from the rack and returned to earth in the event that they ever need repairs or refurbishing. Courtesy photo
 
UAB News:
 
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. ― NASA has a plan for the future of space research, and it is counting on University of Alabama at Birmingham engineers to help make it a reality.
 
The UAB Engineering Innovation and Technology Development research group recently received a contract worth
Read More

LANL: Single-Photon Emitter Has Promise For Quantum Info-Processing

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LANL researchers have produced the first known material capable of single-photon emission at room temperature and at telecommunications wavelengths, using chemically functionalized carbon nanotubes. These quantum light emitters are important for optically-based quantum information processing and information security, ultrasensitive sensing, metrology and imaging needs and as photon sources for quantum optics studies. Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

  • Carbon nanotubes form first known tunable room-temperature quantum emitters at telecom wavelengths

Los Alamos National Laboratory Read More

American Geophysical Union Announces 2017 Fellows

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The American Geophysical Union headquarters in Washington, D.C. Courtesy/AGU

AGU News:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The American Geophysical Union (AGU) today announced its 2017 Fellows, an honor given to individual AGU members who have made exceptional scientific contributions and gained prominence in their respective fields of Earth and space sciences.

Since the AGU Fellows program was established in 1962, and according to the organization’s bylaws, no more than 0.01 percent of the total membership of AGU is recognized annually. This year’s class of Fellows are geographically diverse coming Read More

Museums’ Fossil Mammal Research Project Gets Grant

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Skull of an early Paleocene mammal collected from New Mexico from the collections of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. Courtesy/NMMNHS
 
NSF News:
 
ALBUQUERQUE ― The National Science Foundation has awarded the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science a $101,125 grant to support research on early placental mammals and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) educational programs. 
 
The project, aims to shed light on how mammals fared after the Cretaceous extinction (K-Pg extinction), an event most famous for the
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LANL Information Scientist Herbert Van de Sompel To Receive Paul Evan Peters Award

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Herbert Van De Sompel, an information scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, will recieve the Paul Evan Peters Award.

LANL News:

  • Networked infrastructure to support scholarship among his contributions

Herbert Van de Sompel, research scientist at the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been named the 2017 recipient of the Paul Evan Peters Award from the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), the Association of Research Libraries, and EDUCAUSE.

The award recognizes notable, lasting achievements in the creation and innovative use of network-based information Read More

LAF&SF Features Hope: Science, Religion, And The Future At Unitarian Church 6 p.m. Wednesday

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LAF&SF News: 

Religions provide varieties of short-term, long-term, and eternal hopes and pathways to them. In our culture everyone is free to choose from these hopes or to live without them.

In this final session of the Faith and Science Forum, which is Wednesay, a panel is scheduled to share four faith perspectives on hope: Rabbi Jack Shlachter (also a scientist) will present Jewish hopes; Connon Odom (engineer and Los Alamos Church of Christ deacon) will present comments on Christian hope versus optimism from N.T. Wright (Anglican theologian); Sat Purkh Kaur Khalsa (trainer, Read More

NNSA Conducts Aerial Radiation Assessment Survey

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NNSA News:
 
WASHINGTON, D.C. ― The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s (DOE/NNSA) conducted a low-altitude helicopter flight over portions of the Arlington, Va., area July 22 to measure naturally occurring background radiation.
 
Officials from NNSA announced that the radiation assessment covers approximately three square miles. A twin-engine Bell 412 helicopter, operated by the Remote Sensing Laboratory Aerial Measuring System from Joint Base Andrews, was equipped with radiation sensing technology.
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NOAA’s Climate.Gov: Natural Wetlands, Tropical Agriculture Cause Methane Increases, Not Oil And Gas

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Courtesy/NOAA
 
NOAA News:
 
“Agricultural and wetland emissions” from the planet’s tropical areas, not oil and gas activities in the United States, are more than likely responsible for a post-2007 global increase in methane levels, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate.gov.
 
But regulating or mitigating those methane sources could be difficult or impossible.
 
“Both of the likely contenders for the recent increase in emissions could be tricky to mitigate,” wrote Climate.gov’s Rebecca Lindsey and Michon Scott. “In
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