Nancy Jackson, a chemical engineer at DOE's Sandia National Laboratories, is part of a team that partners with chemistry labs around the world to ensure chemicals are handled safely and securely.
In 2007, Jackson helped the U.S. Department of State create the Chemical Security Engagement Program, and closely works with scientists worldwide, particularly in developing countries, to promote safe use of chemicals and keep them from falling into the wrong hands. She is the manager of Sandia’s International Chemical Threat Reduction program, and her work has led to crucial programs to help laboratories in some of the world’s most volatile regions manage their chemical inventories and secure their chemicals, as well as train future chemists and laboratory trainers in safe handling techniques.
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To get a better understanding of the subatomic soup that filled the early universe, and how it “froze out” to form the atoms of today’s world, scientists are taking a closer look at the nuclear phase diagram. Like a map that describes how the physical state of water morphs from solid ice to liquid to steam with changes in temperature and pressure, the nuclear phase diagram maps out different phases of the components of atomic nuclei—from the free quarks and gluons that existed at the dawn of time to the clusters of protons and neutrons that make up the cores of atoms today.
But “melting” atoms and their subatomic building blocks is far more difficult than taking an ice cube out of the freezer on a warm day. It requires huge particle accelerators like the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, a nuclear physics scientific user facility at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory, to smash atomic nuclei together at close to the speed of light, and sophisticated detectors and powerful supercomputers to help physicists make sense of what comes out. By studying the collision debris and comparing experimental observations with predictions from complex calculations, physicists at Brookhaven are plotting specific points on the nuclear phase diagram to reveal details of this extraordinary transition.
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Some 10 shrill alarms were going off at once. In what looked and sounded like a nuclear plant control room, it appeared that there had been a steam generator tube rupture. In charge of solving the problem: A pair of neuroscience graduate students doing summer research at DOE's Idaho National Laboratory with the Human Factors group — a team of researchers who study the intersections between minds and machines.
Scientists on the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search have set the strongest limits in the world for the detection of a light dark-matter particle with a mass below 6 billion electronvolts, or about six times the mass of a proton.
A team of scientists has reported direct visualization of magnetic charge crystallization in an artificial spin ice material, a first in the study of a relatively new class of frustrated artificial magnetic materials-by-design known as “Artificial Spin Ice.” These charges are analogs to electrical charges with possible applications in magnetic memories and devices; in describing this class of materials, the new work demonstrates their utility.
To improve the accuracy of solar power forecasting, research meteorologist Edwin Campos and his colleagues at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory have partnered with IBM to build a forecasting technology based on IBM's Watson supercomputer, made famous by its 2011 victory over human champions on the television quiz show Jeopardy!.