February 4, 2013 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M — Paul Hommert has been named 2013 Laboratory Director of the Year by the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) for his support of technology transfer activities at Sandia National Laboratories. The FLC said the award recognized the excellence of work during 2012 by Hommert, Sandia’s president and laboratories director,...
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Study rebuts hypothesis that comet attacks ended 13,000-year-old Clovis culture
January 30, 2013 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Rebutting a speculative hypothesis that comet explosions changed Earth’s climate sufficiently to end the Clovis culture in North America about 13,000 years ago, Sandia lead author Mark Boslough and researchers from 14 academic institutions assert that other explanations must be found for the apparent disappearance. “There’s no...
Technologist Richard Simpson: Helping solve Sandia’s unique problems
January 23, 2013 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia principal technologist Richard Simpson has filled a canyon with soap bubbles, shot photos of flaming liquefied natural gas from a helicopter, floated balloons hundreds of feet in the air to calibrate cameras, chopped out pieces of a Cape Canaveral launch pad to haul across the country...
Categories: Science / Technology / Engineering
Topics: General science
Detecting tunnels using seismic waves not as simple as it sounds
December 6, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — You’d think it would be easy to use seismic waves to find tunnels dug by smugglers of drugs, weapons or people. You’d be wrong. Nedra Bonal of Sandia’s geophysics and atmospheric sciences organization is nearing the end of a two-year study, “Improving Shallow Tunnel Detection From Surface...
Categories: Homeland security, Science / Technology / Engineering
Sandia physicist wins two national awards
November 29, 2012 • Albuquerque, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories senior manager Mark Herrmann has garnered two national awards for his work in high-energy-density science. In September, the American Physical Society elected him a Fellow, an honor limited to 0.5 percent of the society’s membership in any given year. The citation, formally presented at...
Sandia helps DOE bring large-scale solar systems to market
November 27, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories is advancing viable, low-carbon power through collaborating on five U.S. Regional Test Centers (RTCs) where industry can assess the performance, reliability and bankability of large-scale photovoltaic energy systems. “With the trend in the solar industry toward larger systems and greater capital investment – substantial...
Categories: Energy / Environment / Water, Operations / Budget, Renewable energy, Science / Technology / Engineering, Technology transfer / Economic Impact
Topics: business, economic development, energy, national laboratories, national labs, partnerships, power, PV, renewable, research, Sandia, solar, testing
Modern-day cleanroom invented by Sandia physicist still used 50 years later
November 26, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — When Willis Whitfield invented the modern-day cleanroom 50 years ago, researchers and industrialists didn’t believe it at first. But within a few short years, $50 billion worth of laminar-flow cleanrooms were being built worldwide and the invention is used in hospitals, laboratories and manufacturing plants today. The...
Categories: Science / Technology / Engineering
Topics: clean room, cleanroom, engineering, inventor, MESA, national laboratories, Sandia, Whitfield
Researchers use shock tube for insight into physics early in blasts
November 20, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia’s one-of-a-kind multiphase shock tube began with a hallway conversation that led to what engineer Justin Wagner describes as the only shock tube in the world that can look at how shock waves interact with dense particle fields. The machine is considered multiphase because it can study...
Categories: Science / Technology / Engineering
Topics: physics, shock tube
Primary Standards Laboratory: Sandia’s the word for precision measurements, calibrations
November 15, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — You probably never gave roundness a thought. But when it’s crucial that something be really round, federal labs and agencies can turn to the Department of Energy’s Primary Standards Laboratory (PSL), operated by Sandia. The PSL is often the last word on measurements, particularly in the world...
Categories: Science / Technology / Engineering
Northrop Grumman, GE partnerships tap wide range of Sandia Labs expertise
November 5, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Sandia National Laboratories has signed a pair of cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) that could broadly add to the Labs’ research into combustion, defense, energy and nuclear security. The umbrella CRADAs, which enable Sandia and its partners to pursue multiple projects in a variety of categories,...
Four technology transfer awards go to Sandia Labs
October 22, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Sandia National Laboratories has won four awards from the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) for Sandia’s efforts to develop and commercialize innovative technologies. The FLC’s Far West/Mid-Continent regional awards recognized Sandia’s technology transfer work with crystalline silico-titanates (CSTs), biomimetic membranes, the i-Gate Innovation Hub and DAKOTA software. “It...
Sandia experts help when sinkhole opens up in Louisiana
September 26, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The U.S. Geological Survey turned to Sandia National Laboratories for help when the earth opened up last month near Bayou Corne, La. Sandia’s David Borns is providing technical evaluations in weekly teleconferences about possible causes and remedies for a 300-foot-wide sinkhole there. “We try to be of...
Categories: Science / Technology / Engineering
Topics: Geoscience
Students painlessly measure knee joint fluids in annual Sandia contest
September 26, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Texas Tech University repeated last year’s victory in the novel design category of Sandia National Laboratories’ annual competition to design new, extraordinarily tiny devices, while Carnegie Mellon University won the educational microelectromechanical (MEMS) prize for the second year in a row. This year’s contest attracted engineering students...
Sandia solar researcher chosen as one of continent’s ten most brilliant scientists
September 24, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia researcher Greg Nielson is “one of the 10 most promising young scientists working today,” says Popular Science magazine. Nielson garnered one of the magazine’s “Brilliant 10” awards for helping lead the Sandia effort to create solar cells the size of glitter. Past Brilliant 10 honorees have...
Sandia shows why common explosive sometimes fails
September 20, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The explosive PETN has been around for a century and is used by everyone from miners to the military, but it took new research by Sandia National Laboratories to begin to discover key mechanisms behind what causes it to fail at small scales. “Despite the fact explosives...
Categories: Science / Technology / Engineering
Topics: explosives research
Dry-run experiments verify key aspect of Sandia nuclear fusion concept
September 17, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Magnetically imploded tubes called liners, intended to help produce controlled nuclear fusion at scientific “break-even” energies or better within the next few years, have functioned successfully in preliminary tests, according to a Sandia research paper accepted for publication by Physical Review Letters (PRL). To exceed scientific break-even is...
Categories: Energy / Environment / Water, Materials Science, Military / Defense, Nanotechnology, Nuclear Weapons, Science / Technology / Engineering
Topics: beryllium, deuterium, energy, magnetic fields, nuclear fusion, simulations, tritium, Z accelerator, z machine
Sandia shows monitoring brain activity during study can help predict test performance
September 10, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Research at Sandia National Laboratories has shown that it’s possible to predict how well people will remember information by monitoring their brain activity while they study. A team under Laura Matzen of Sandia’s cognitive systems group was the first to demonstrate predictions based on the results of...
Categories: Biology, Science / Technology / Engineering
Sandia Science & Technology Park fuels economy with jobs, tax revenue, spending
August 28, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The $1.89 billion in economic activity generated by the Sandia Science & Technology Park (SS&TP) since it was established in 1998 has produced more than $73 million in tax revenue for the state of New Mexico and $10.4 million for the city of Albuquerque, according to a...
Sandia explosives legend Paul Cooper hangs up his teaching hat
August 27, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Paul Cooper, one of the world’s foremost explosives experts, retired from Sandia National Laboratories more than a decade ago but continued his labor of love, teaching a new generation of engineers everything they needed to know about blowing things up. Cooper taught explosives safety and technology to...
Sandia Science & Technology Park to host news conference on economic impact results
August 23, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia Science & Technology Park (SS&TP) will host a news conference Tuesday to announce the results of an economic impact report by the Mid-Region Council of Governments (MRCOG). The findings will be reported by the city of Albuquerque, represented by Chief Administrative Officer Rob Perry, and Bernalillo...
Lifelike, cost-effective robotic Sandia Hand can disable IEDs
August 15, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Sandia National Laboratories has developed a cost-effective robotic hand that can be used in disarming improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. The Sandia Hand addresses challenges that have prevented widespread adoption of other robotic hands, such as cost, durability, dexterity and modularity. “Current iterations of robotic hands can...
Categories: Military / Defense, Science / Technology / Engineering
Topics: robotics
“Toxic” political discussions limit climate response, says invited speaker at Sandia
August 14, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The inability of natural and social scientists to convince political leaders that “we’re spinning a roulette wheel over climate change” puts humanity at “extreme risk,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology management professor Henry Jacoby, former co-director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of...
Alaskan North Slope climate: hard data from a hard place
August 13, 2012 • Researchers examine clouds (from both sides now) and the structure of the atmosphere BARROW, Alaska — Sandia National Laboratories’ researcher Mark Ivey and I (science writer Neal Singer) are standing on the tundra at an outpost of science at the northernmost point of the North American continent. We are five miles northeast...
Increased productivity, not less energy use, results from more efficient lighting
August 6, 2012 • ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Two researchers have reprised in the journal Energy Policy their groundbreaking finding that improvements in lighting — from candles to gas lamps to electric bulbs — historically have led to increased light consumption rather than lower overall energy use by society. In an article in the journal...
Stan Atcitty and Dan Sinars honored by President Obama for early career accomplishments
July 25, 2012 • [caption id="" align="alignright" width="250" caption="Sandia researcher Stan Atcitty was recognized for advances in power electronics. (Photo by Randy Montoya) Click on the thumbnail for a high-resolution image."][/caption]Sandia researchers Stan Atcitty and Dan Sinars have…
Categories: Awards, Energy / Environment / Water, Operations / Budget, Science / Technology / Engineering
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