news 2009

Recognizes sustained, outstanding scientific contributions Los Alamos, New Mexico, November 5, 2009—Antoinette "Toni" Taylor, Stephen Becker, Joachim Birn, Lowell Brown, Patrick Colestock, and Samuel "Tom" Picraux have been designated 2009 Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellows in recognition of sustained, outstanding scientific contributions and exceptional promise for continued professional achievement.

I believe the selection of A. Eugene Washington to serve as the next dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine and vice chancellor of health sciences at UCLA is an inspired choice and signals a strong commitment to the issues of greatest importance to academic medicine in the coming years. Dr. Washington's distinguished background in medical research, clinical care, public health, and health care disparities taken together means he will be perfectly situated to lead what is already a great institution's health sciences program to new and even greater accomplishment.

Leprosy still affects hundreds of thousands of people today throughout the entire world. An international team headed by EPFL professor Stewart Cole has traced the history of the disease from ancient Egypt to today and in doing so has made a public health study essential for combating the disease.

Cambridge, Mass. November 4, 2009 - Physicists at Harvard University have created a quantum gas microscope that can be used to observe single atoms at temperatures so low the particles follow the rules of quantum mechanics, behaving in bizarre ways. The work, published this week in the journal Nature, represents the first time scientists have detected single atoms in a crystalline structure made solely of light, called a Bose Hubbard optical lattice.

A drug used to treat Parkinson's disease will be trialled as a treatment for stroke patients working to regain mobility and independence, in the first large scale study of its kind. A collaborative team of researchers will investigate the impact of combining the drug L-dopa with conventional physiotherapy and occupational therapy to increase stroke patients' ability to relearn fundamental activities such as walking.

PA 281/09 Children born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy are more likely to experiment with drugs in their teens, the findings of a new study suggest. Research carried out by The University of Nottingham and a number of Canadian Universities found that children exposed to cigarette smoke in the womb were more likely to experiment with drugs, such as alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana, during adolescence.

People who eat a diet laden with processed and high-fat foods may put themselves at greater risk of depression, according to UCL research published today. The research team, led by Tasnime Akbaraly (UCL Epidemiology and Public Health), also found that eating a 'whole food? diet with plenty of fresh vegetables, fruit and fish could help prevent the onset of depressive symptoms in middle age.

The focus is to understand the three-dimensional evolution of thin electrical current layers where magnetic reconnection initially develops. Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental process in physics, the continuous breaking and rearrangement of magnetic field lines in a plasma Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 30, 2009—Although physicists have made considerable progress understanding magnetic reconnection, many important questions are still being debated.

BERKELEY — Paleontologists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the Museum of the Rockies have wiped out two species of dome-headed dinosaur, one of them named three years ago – with great fanfare – after Hogwarts, the school attended by Harry Potter. Dracorex (upper left) and Stygimoloch (upper right) are not distinct dome-headed dinosaurs, but young and nearly sexually mature, respectively, members of the species Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis , according to a new study by paleontologists from UC Berkeley and the Museum of the Rockies.

Cambridge, Mass. October 30, 2009 - A new study from a researcher at Harvard University finds that gay men are most attracted to the most masculine-faced men, while straight men prefer the most feminine-faced women. The research is currently published online in the journal "Archives of Sexual Behavior," and was led by Aaron Glassenberg, while completing his master’s degree in the Department of Psychology at Harvard.

Advances in experimental techniques and supercomputer performance, culminating with Roadrunner, have reduced the gap between experiment and simulation Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 30, 2009—The long-established and reliable SPaSM (Scalable Parallel Short-range Molecular dynamics) code, adapted to run on the world's fastest supercomputer, Roadrunner, is being used to study the physics of how materials break up, called "spall," and how pieces fly off, called "ejecta," from thin sheets of copper as shock waves force the material break apart at the atomic scale.

Odours are powerful stimulants for the human brain. Now, for the first time, researchers have succeeded in demonstrating that the evaluation of olfactory perceptions actually follows a very strict order.

Through these simulations, scientists are developing a better understanding of how materials behave at the size scale of a nanometer, or one-billionth of a meter Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 29, 2009— Very tiny wires, called nanowires, made from such metals as silver and gold, may play a crucial role as electrical or mechanical switches in the development of future-generation ultrasmall nanodevices.

Lifetime physically active men have a lower risk of developing prostate cancer, according to a new study from Karolinska Institutet (KI). The effect was observable in those who had been sitting for less than half their working day or had been physically active for more than an hour a day. In 1997, over 45,000 Swedish men between the ages of 45 and 79 responded to a survey on lifestyles and degree of lifetime physical activity.

October 28, 2009 — Coral Gables — One of the joys of riding a motorcycle is the freedom that comes with that form of travel. However the absence of physical barriers to protect riders puts motorcyclists at a higher risk of injury than other motorists. Motorcycle fatalities have been on the rise for many years, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.

To achieve fusion scientists must put as much laser energy on target as possible, a task complicated by energy loss due to laser backscatter, or reflection Los Alamos, New Mexico, Oct 28, 2009—For years scientists have struggled with the difficult physics of inertial confinement fusion. This is the attempt to compress a target capsule containing isotopes of hydrogen with high-powered lasers to high enough pressure and temperature to initiate fusion burn.

Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 27, 2009—Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Sanjay Reddy talks about the nature of neutron stars in a Frontiers in Science lecture at 7 p.m. November 3, in the Duane Smith Auditorium at Los Alamos High School. Reddy will give the same lecture November 5, 10, and 16 in Albuquerque, Española, and Santa Fe, respectively.

Mapping Darwinian evolutionary relationships results in an HIV family tree that may lead researchers to new vaccine focus areas. Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 27, 2009 — Supporting Los Alamos National Laboratory's role in the international Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI) consortium, researchers are using the Roadrunner supercomputer to analyze vast quantities of genetic sequences from HIV infected people in the hope of zeroing in on possible vaccine target areas.

Cambridge, Mass. October 26, 2009 - The rationale behind torture is that pain will make the guilty confess, but a new study by researchers at Harvard University finds that the pain of torture can make even the innocent seem guilty. Participants in the study met a woman suspected of cheating to win money.

World?s fastest supercomputer used to create first-of-a-kind computer codes and simulations of the biggest of the big and smallest of the small Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 26, 2009—The world's fastest supercomputer, Roadrunner, at Los Alamos National Laboratory has completed its initial "shakedown" phase doing accelerated petascale computer modeling and simulations of a variety of unclassified, fundamental science projects.