12
Sep2012
How do you run chemical tests at a geologic site millions of miles away from you to see what the rocks and soil are made of? Curiosity’s new instrument ChemCam, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is designed to determine how much light is emitted at each frequency by a geologic sample when it’s heated by a laser beam. Since different materials have different light-emission patterns, measuring the patterns shows what materials emitted them.
Slide presentations giving a general view of Los Alamos contributions to ChemCam:
04
Sep2012
Science is always in the spotlight at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, a land-grant institution and the state's flagship research campus. Recent research might include searching for potential habitats for life on Mars, developing an autotaxin inhibitor to fight cancer, designing a car for the DOE EcoCAR 2 competition, determining the boundaries of the nuclear chart or developing “Living Light”, a net-zero energy home for DOE’s Solar Decathlon. UTK is situated in an ideal environment for research.
31
Aug2012
The E-print Network provides a vast, integrated network of electronic scientific and technical information created by scientists and research engineers active in their respective fields, all full-text searchable. Documents such as these are the means by which today’s scientists and researchers communicate their recent findings to their colleagues and by which they propose new ideas of how the world works to their peers for their collective judgment. Documents such as these then are of the sort that becomes the central body of scientific information. While the E-print Network is intended for use by scientists, engineers, and students at advanced levels, it is freely available for all users.
30
Aug2012
What is Adopt-A-Doc? Adopt-A-Doc is another way OSTI is working to increase the availability of important research. You can be a part of accelerating scientific discovery and help make important research available online by sponsoring the digitization of any adoptable U.S Department of Energy (DOE) technical report. Your report will be made full-text searchable by DOE search engines like Science Accelerator.gov and Science.gov; as well as be exposed to general purpose search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
28
Aug2012
Wind-Energy - A Revitalized Pursuit was issued by Sandia Laboratories in 1974. This report discusses challenges of the “energy crunch” and the U.S. goal to maintain high standards of living by developing “promising energy sources that are (1) vast, (2) environmentally acceptable, and (3) economically competitive.” The authors felt that wind energy was a feasible solution.
Devising ways to efficiently harness the wind is an ongoing pursuit of scientists around the world. The wind mills of the past have evolved into high-tech wind turbines, governed by complex computer systems. These control systems continue to be more and more important as turbines become larger, with more flexible and lighter components. Advanced controls are necessary to prevent damage and possible malfunction of the turbines. Facilities for testing new control systems at the National Wind Technology Center are described in the fact sheet Advanced Wind Turbine Controls Reduce Loads.
Read more about wind energy in the DOE Science Showcase: Wind Power and watch Energy 101: Wind Turbines (YouTube) to learn about the fundamentals and future of wind energy.
Daphne Evans, OSTI Staff
