Monday, June 13, 2011

Solar storm delivers a glancing blow to Earth – and a warning

(CS Monitor) Charged particles from a huge solar eruption two days ago delivered only a glancing blow to Earth Thursday. But it still represented a warning...A far stronger solar outburst could overload and wreck hundreds of critical high-voltage transformers nationwide, blacking out 130 million people for months and costing as much as $2 trillion, according to an Oak Ridge National Laboratory study...6/9

Electrically Assisted Diesel Particulate Filter Could Save Fuel in Heavy-Duty Pickups

(PickupTrucks.com) GM and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are jointly developing new emissions-cleaning technology that promises better fuel economy for future heavy-duty diesel truck buyers, according to a presentation given during the U.S. Department of Energy's 2011 Merit Review in Washington, D.C...6/10

Neutron analysis explains dynamics behind best thermoelectric materials

(Space Daily) Neutron analysis of the atomic dynamics behind thermal conductivity is helping scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory gain a deeper understanding of how thermoelectric materials work...6/13

Weinberg & Rickover: a correspondence

(Knoxville News Sentinel) It was January 1951 and Alvin Weinberg, then research director at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, had just been named one of the 10 Outstanding Young Men in the U.S. There was a story in The Washington Post, prompting Capt. Hyman Rickover to send a clip of the newspaper article and a note to Weinberg...6/11

Previous ORNL Stories

DOE

Heavy water work at Y-12 in Oak Ridge earns an award

(Oak Ridger) The National Nuclear Security Administration recently announced that NNSA and the Department of Energy's Federal Energy Management Program have received the Defense Logistics Agency's 2011 Customer of the Year Award...6/10

Science search tools now tap audio/video

(Knoxville News Sentinel) The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge-based Office of Scientific and Technical Information announced that researchers and everybody interested can search for both audio and video presentations, as well as the written documents, as part of the new "speech-indexed" multimedia within the science search portals...6/12

State & Regional

Tennessee Tuition jump could be 9.5 percent

(Forbes) Students attending Tennessee colleges and universities could see a tuition increase of 9.5 percent or more this fall, the chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents said Wednesday...6/8

National

China ratings house says US defaulting: report

(Yahoo News) A Chinese ratings house has accused the United States of defaulting on its massive debt, state media said Friday, a day after Beijing urged Washington to put its fiscal house in order...6/10

Pentagon Papers being released 40 years later

(WBIR) Four decades after the Pentagon Papers began appearing in The New York Times, triggering a constitutional crisis over freedom of the press, the once top-secret study of the Vietnam War is being released...6/12

East Tennessee

Report: Knoxville-area immigrant population diverse, more likely college-educated

(Knoxville News Sentinel) A just-released report by the Brookings Institution debunks many of the traditionally held views regarding the face of immigrants and their place in the work force...6/13

energy & science policy

House Actions on FY 2012 Defense Bills

(AIP) The House Armed Services Committee and the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense are moving ahead on the authorization and appropriations bills for the Defense Department for FY 2012...6/9

Inside Energy Extra

06/10 A daily report on U.S. energy policy
[ORNL users only]

AEP to retire 6,000 MW to meet EPA rules
Greens sue to stop deepwater exploration
BLM, EPA agree on Utah gas project
US review of Fukushima seen taking years
Nevada geothermal plants get loan award

science & technology

Tevatron Did Not See A New Particle After All, Fermilab Says

(Popular Science) America’s grand particle smasher may not go out with a bang after all. A bump in data at the Tevatron, reported earlier this spring, turns out to be a false alarm — not a new particle or a new force of nature. Physicists at Fermilab say they looked at 200 trillion particle collisions and did not see the same bump in data that their colleagues had announced back in April...6/10

"Vampire" Stars Found in Heart of Our Galaxy—A First

(National Geographic News) Called blue stragglers, these cannibal stars have been spotted in other parts of the Milky Way. They seem to lag in age next to the other stars with which they formed—appearing hotter, and thus younger and bluer...6/9

Stop on Red: The Effects of Color May Lie Deep in Evolution

(Science Daily) Almost universally, red means stop. Red means danger. Red means hot. And analyzing the results in the 2004 Olympics, researchers have found that red also means dominance...6/8