Fire danger: High
Updated at 11:30 a.m.
UPTE to pass out leaflets on Lab property Monday
The University Professional and Technical Employees, Local 1663, has been granted approval to pass out leaflets on Laboratory property Monday at the following locations:
UPTE members have agreed not to harass anyone and to abide by all safety and security requirements. Remember, you do not have to accept the leaflets when they are offered to you, but respect UPTE's right to leaflet.
For more information, call Bill Sprouse, Debbi Maez or Dave Smith at 5-3505.
News from earlier today
Potential water-saving solutions to be tested
Beginning this month, four companies will begin testing new technologies or processes that may help the Laboratory save hundreds of millions of gallons of water used annually in cooling towers.
The 90-day test is part of a $1 million pilot program sponsored by the Laboratory's Nuclear Weapons Infrastructure and Facilities Construction Program and managed by the Environmental Stewardship Office (E-ESO). The Facility and Waste Operations (FWO) Division also is actively involved in the pilot project and is responsible for implementing the chosen solution(s).
The four companies are Water and Energy Systems Technologies Inc. of Anaheim, Calif.; U.S. Filter of Pittsburgh; Aquatech International Corp. of Anonsburg, Pa.; and NALCO Chemical Co. of Scottsdale, Ariz. They were selected from more than 10 companies that submitted proposals to Los Alamos late last year. Two of the four competing companies are small businesses.
Currently, Los Alamos cooling towers use treated sanitary wastewater
and water supplied from a deep regional aquifer. However, the
water contains a high concentration of silica, approximately 88
milligrams per liter.
Because about 90 percent of the silica is soluble, it can deposit
in large concentrations on heat transfer surfaces in the cooling
systems during normal evaporation processes, clogging passageways
and causing system failures. To avoid this, the Laboratory typically
discharges the water after two cycles.
"We are trying to find a new technology or chemical process
that will keep the silica in solution, dramatically reduce the
amount of silica in the water or eliminate it altogether. This
will allow us to increase the number of cycles to at least four
and decrease our water usage by 150 to 200 million gallons annually,"
said D'Ann Bretzke of E-ESO. "Right now, our cooling tower
water efficiency stands at about 50 percent. We want to increase
that to at least 75 percent."
The tests will be conducted at Mission Research Corp. on Main Hill Road in Los Alamos, where three small cooling towers have been installed so the companies can test their proposed solutions.
Cooling towers maintain proper temperatures for facilities and equipment. Los Alamos has about 40 such towers, which use more than half of the potable water consumed by the Laboratory annually. The pilot program focuses on five cooling tower areas that are or will be major water consumers: those for the onsite power plant, Laboratory Data Communications Center, Central Computing Facility, Los Alamos Neutron Science Center and the Strategic Computing Complex currently under construction.
"When the Department of Energy recently transferred management of its local water rights to Los Alamos County, it agreed the Laboratory would emphasize water conservation and try to use no more than 1,662 acre-feet of water annually," said Bretzke. An acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons, enough water to cover one acre to a depth of one foot.
"We already use about 1,500 acre-feet of water annually, and that is projected to increase by an additional 145 acre-feet by 2001, due to the new Strategic Computing Complex and new mission needs," she said.
The $1 million in project funding will be used to pay the four companies to run the pilots, procure the equipment, pay Mission Research Corp. for support and pay onsite Laboratory costs.
"Once the testing is complete, we will analyze the results and choose those solutions that offer the best technical value compared to their costs," Bretzke said. She added the chosen technologies or processes also may be applied to other cooling towers at the Laboratory. Los Alamos will select its preferred solution(s) by this fall.
--Ternel N. Martinez
Soft computing guru will discuss fuzzy logic and related issues
The director of the Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing will deliver a Director's Colloquium at the Lab at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Physics Building Auditorium. Lotfi A. Zadeh, known as the "Father of Fuzzy Logic," will speak on the role of natural languages in information processing, decision and control.
The talk is open to the public and will be broadcast on LABNET.
Zadeh is currently a professor in the Graduate School, Computer Science Division of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1959. An alumnus of the University of Teheran, MIT and Columbia University, he was previously a member of the electrical engineering faculty at Columbia and a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.
Zadeh's first important work was his doctoral dissertation on the frequency analysis of time-varying networks, in which he introduced the concept of a time-varying transfer function. In 1963, he co-authored a classic text on the state-space theory of linear systems. This book is widely regarded as a landmark in the development of the state-space approach and its application to control and systems analysis.
Before the publication of his seminal paper on fuzzy sets in 1965, Zadeh was recognized internationally as one of the leading contributors to the development of system theory and its applications. His paper on fuzzy sets marked the beginning of a new direction. By introducing the concept of a fuzzy set -- a class with unsharp boundaries -- he provided a basis for a qualitative approach to the analysis of complex systems in which linguistic rather than numerical variables are employed to describe system behavior and performance. This approach led to scores of practical applications of fuzzy logic, such as automated climate control systems and self-focusing cameras.
Currently, Zadeh's work is focused on the development of the methodology of computing with words and the computational theory of perceptions, a new direction in fuzzy logic. In his talk Tuesday, he will discuss the construction of a precisiated natural language, one equipped with constraint-centered semantics.
"The concept of a precisiated natural language and the associated methodologies of computing with words and the computational theory of perceptions open the door to a wide-ranging generalization and restructuring of existing theories, especially in the realms of information processing, decision and control," he said. "In this perspective, what is very likely is that in coming years a number of basic concepts and techniques drawn from linguistics will be playing a much more important role in scientific theories than they do today."
--Kay Roybal
Nanoscale science implications
go far beyond medicine
Mihail "Mike" Roco of the National Science Foundation talked about nanoscale science and engineering during a Director's Colloquium Tuesday in the Physics Building Auditorium. Roco is chairman of the President's National Science and Technology Council's Interagency Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology working group. Photo by LeRoy N. Sanchez
The implications of nanoscale science are so far reaching as to have societal implications ranging from how health care decisions are made and medicines are delivered to how the nation's Social Security system is managed to how best to preserve natural resources.
That was the message delivered by Mihail "Mike" Roco of the National Science Foundation and chairperson of the President's National Science and Technology Council's Interagency Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology working group. Roco spoke at a Director's Colloquium Tuesday in the Physics Building Auditorium about the importance of nanoscale science.
While at Los Alamos, Roco also attended brief overviews in the Materials Science Laboratory Auditorium given by Los Alamos researchers engaged in nanoscale science and technology. He also toured the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center at Technical Area 53 and the Lab's National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at TA-35.
"I came here to see what Los Alamos is doing in nanoscience," Roco told a nearly full Physics Building Auditorium; the colloquium also was shown on LABNET. "Most people look at nanoscience as part of science fiction, or interesting to only a small number of researchers," he said.
In reality, Roco said, a number of agencies are engaged in nanoscale science and engineering. The National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the departments of Energy and Defense, NASA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology all have specific needs and interest in nanoscale science and technology.
The National Institutes of Health see nanoscale science as allowing doctors to detect diseases at the molecular level and develop treatments long before a person's health begins to deteriorate. Improved sensors for detection, imaging devices and new implants to replace body parts all will be developed using nanoscale science and engineering, said Roco.
The implications go far beyond medicine, Roco said, postulating that new drugs and treatments for illnesses will help increase average lifespans, which could affect the Social Security system.
NASA is interested in nanoscale science for reducing the size of spacecraft and for biotechnology purposes, while the Department of Defense sees a nanoscale path to new multifunctional materials and monitoring devices for defense and national security.
The DOE is forming a joint Defense Programs and Office of Science Nanoscience Network.
Nanoscience is the ability to work at the atomic and molecular levels to create novel and significantly improved devices and systems. The prefix "nano" refers to one-billionth of something, be it a measurement of size or time. Hence, a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter and a nanosecond is one-billionth of a second.
To put one-billionth in perspective, consider that a single strand of human hair is 75 to 100 micrometers in width. (By contrast, 75 to 100 nanometers is 1,000 times smaller). One nanometer is 100,000 times smaller than the width of that same strand of hair. Yet this is the scale at which scientists are designing new materials and devices.
Roco said the large-scale application of nanoscale technology is still a few years away. But from a strategic perspective, he said the United States should be positioning itself to be at the forefront of nanoscience and engineering. Roco used a viewgraph that showed that Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom and smaller countries like Korea already are engaged in nanoscale research.
He said the nanoscale working group he chairs has recommended large funding increases in fiscal year 2001 for nanoscience and nanotechnology research. President Clinton also has emphasized the importance of nanoscale science, he added.
"Nanoscale will have a broad affect on our daily life," said Roco. "This is of strategic importance for the U.S. in the next 20 years. This is just the beginning of the road."
Roco noted that the National Science Foundation views positively developments around the world in the nanosciences and encouraged countries to collaborate on nanoscale research. "You need to share some of the efforts," he said. "Collaborative efforts are very positive."
Speaking to reporters after the colloquium, Roco alluded to the push worldwide to engage in nanoscience research and engineering. "The race is on to establish strongholds in various aspects of nanotechnology [research]," he said. In the short term, he said, nanoscale research should focus more on discovery. Nanoscale science and technology isn't yet ready for commercialization, he said.
He also said nanoscale science and engineering could have environmental benefits because new nanoscience-developed materials will help slow the depletion of natural resources helping to create a "sustainable society on Earth."
Los Alamos scientists and researchers are engaged in a number of nanoscience activities, ranging from nanoscale materials and chemistry to theory and modeling, bioscience, nanoscale sensors and devices, synthesis and fabrication.
The Laboratory also is encouraging cross-disciplinary research in nanoscience and technology. One example, Lowe said, is the Laboratory's Biosciences (B) Division, which hosts a Bio/Physical Sciences Forum that engages scientists with diverse backgrounds from all parts of the Lab in presentations and discussions, particularly in the nanosciences area.
Los Alamos and other institutions, also recently collaborated at a nanoscience and technology forum that brought together researchers from academia, the military and other DOE sites.
Roco is credited with 13 inventions, has written 250 articles and has coauthored several books and manuals, including "Nanostructure Science and Technology" last year. He has received numerous awards and recognitions from scientific and professional organizations in the United States and abroad.
Roco's colloquium will be rebroadcast on LABNET Channel 10 beginning next week. Check the LABNET Channel 10 schedule at http://www.hr.lanl.gov/TIO/labnet10.htm online for program times.
More information on nanoscience at Los Alamos is available at http://int.lanl.gov/orgs/mst/nanotech/nano.html online.
--Steve Sandoval
Gary Cort, left, of Quality Management (ESH-14) and Corinne Cort, center, of Advanced Database and Information Technology (CIC-15) look at items with Fire Chief Doug MacDonald that French firefighters from the Montauban Fire Department in the province of Tarn et Garonne gave to the Los Alamos Fire Department as a goodwill gesture. Photo by Kathy DeLucas
Tour de France
Southern France firefighters from the Montauban Fire Department in the province of Tarn et Garonne have made many new friends in the Los Alamos Fire Department.
As a gesture of goodwill, the French firefighters have given LAFD a complete fireman's uniform, assorted patches and a calendar containing photos of the fire brigade in training.
Laboratory employees Gary and Corinne
Cort traveled to France last Spring to visit her parents. Her
father is a good friend of the local firefighters and the couple
received a tour of the local fire-fighting capabilities. They
spent two hours discovering the equipment, including specialized
vehicles, the tower for drying hoses, the heliport, the dorms
and, of course, the kitchen. The Corts witnessed an actual emergency
response as it unfolded in the emergency response center and looked
at detailed emergency response maps, including a detailed layout
of the local nuclear reactor facility.
The Lab couple tried on French equipment including high-tech fire helmets and heat-resistant protective clothing that incorporates heat-sensing and emergency-locator electronics.
Toward the end of the tour, the fire company gave them mementos to present to the Los Alamos Fire Department as a gesture of their regard for their colleagues.
"We were deeply touched by their generosity and graciousness," Gary Cort said.
Nearly a year later, the Corts have presented the uniforms to the LAFD. Chief Doug MacDonald responded by donating excess equipment such as a dress uniform, pins and educational material to give back to their French fire-fighting counterparts.
The couple toured Fire Station One and received demonstrations of LAFD capabilities and descriptions of fire-fighting equipment. Gary and Corinne will soon leave the Lab as they have accepted new jobs in Phoenix.
--Kathy DeLucas
Southwest historian to talk about New
Mexico and spies in World War II
Spies and espionage -- two words that have always captured the interest of the American public and the American government -- will be discussed in light of what was to have been the world's best kept secret. The Manhattan Project, the enormous effort that produced the world's first atomic bomb, covered 37 installations across the United States. The tightest security was reportedly reserved for Los Alamos, the site where the bomb was perfected. Historian Richard Melzer sheds new light on how security at Los Alamos broke down during that critical time in world history. Evidence from Soviet and American sources have proven that at least three, and as many as six, Communist spies penetrated the security system at Los Alamos and shared the secret of the atomic bomb with the Stalin regime in the Soviet Union before the end of World War II.
Melzer, a specialist in the history of twentieth century New Mexico history and a professor at the University of New Mexico-Valencia Campus, will speak at the Bradbury Science Museum from 7 to 8:15 p.m. Tuesday. Following the talk, the Otowi Station Bookstore, next door to the Museum, will open for Melzer to sign copies of his book, "Breakdown: How the Secret of the Atomic Bomb was Stolen During World War II." The Laboratory's historian, Roger Meade, interviewed by Metzer for the book, will introduce the author; and the audience will have time for questions and answers at the conclusion of the talk.
The Bradbury Science Museum is located at 15th and Central in downtown Los Alamos. The talk, which is sponsored by the Otowi Station Bookstore, is free and open to the public. For more information, call the museum at 7-4444 or Otowi Station Bookstore at 662-9589.
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Bioinformatics focus of 'Science for the 21st Century' Bioinformatics, which was born of the convergence of the rapidly expanding fields of computer science and biomedicine in the latter part of the 20th century, is the focus of this week's issue of "Science for the 21st Century," a communication project launched by the Lab's Public Affairs Office. The project involves a series of one-page papers describing Laboratory technologies and research that have an impact on science today and in the future. The papers cover diverse topics and highlight many areas of Laboratory research, including those efforts that involve numerous groups, divisions and directorates. A "Science for the 21st Century" article will be distributed each week during the next year to science editors at national, regional and local publications. The articles also will be available to employees on the Web at http://www.lanl.gov./orgs/pa/science21 as they are released (see the Jan. 12 Newsbulletin). |
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Southwest
historian to talk about New Mexico and spies in World War II
