A weakness in one common open source software for genomic analysis left DNA-based medical diagnostics vulnerable to cyberattacks. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories identified the weakness and notified the software developers, who issued a patch to fix the problem. The issue has also been fixed in the latest release of the software.
A sensor for detecting toxic gases is now smaller, faster and more reliable. Its performance sets it up for integration in a highly sensitive portable system for detecting chemical weapons. Better miniature sensors can also rapidly detect airborne toxins where they occur, providing key information to help emergency personnel respond safely and effectively to an incident.
Sandia National Laboratories will be doubling the amount of technical assistance it provides to small businesses, following legislation signed into New Mexico state law this year.
Drones and crawling robots outfitted with special scanning technology could help wind blades stay in service longer, which may help lower the cost of wind energy at a time when blades are getting bigger, pricier and harder to transport, Sandia National Laboratories researchers say. As part of the Department of Energy’s Blade Reliability Collaborative work, funded by the Wind Energy Technologies Office, Sandia researchers partnered with energy businesses to develop machines that noninvasively inspect wind blades for hidden damage while being faster and more detailed than traditional inspections with cameras.
Sandia National Laboratories and partners developed new software that can perform quasi-static time series analysis 1,000 times faster than previous tools to show how rooftop solar panels interact with the electrical grid throughout the year.
New insights about how to understand and ultimately control the chemistry of ignition behavior and pollutant formation have been discovered in research led by Sandia National Laboratories. The discovery eventually will lead to cleaner, more efficient internal combustion engines.“Our findings will allow the design of new fuels and improved combustion strategies,” said Nils Hansen, Sandia researcher and lead author of the research.
Certain molecules of iron, when juxtaposed, have been found by Sandia National Labs and Aramco Research Center researchers to cause microscopic holes in steel pipe used for oil transport.
Sandia National Laboratories recently launched a bus into space. Not the kind with wheels that go round and round, but the kind of device that links electronic devices. The bus was among 16 total experiments that were part of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s HOT SHOT program.
Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico have signed an umbrella Cooperative Research and Development Agreement to bolster national security and advance science and engineering. The CRADA allows the labs and university to explore research collaborations among scientists, faculty and students in several areas, including ongoing projects. The agreement will immediately launch two projects focusing on radiation testing and developing particle detector designs for the European particle physics laboratory CERN.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — When traveling at five times the speed of sound or faster, the tiniest bit of turbulence is more than a bump in the road, said the Sandia National Laboratories aerospace engineer who for the first time characterized the vibrational effect of the pressure field beneath one of these tiny hypersonic turbulent spots.
Sandia announced today the formation of Autonomy New Mexico, a national academic research coalition whose mission is to create artificially intelligent aerospace systems.
Sandia National Laboratories ecologist Jennifer Payne is one of two Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioners in New Mexico, a title held by only 150 people in the country. With an eye for vegetation, she helps protect lands and upholds labs commitments to protecting the environment.
Sandia National Laboratories has created the first inverse-design software for optical metamaterials — meaning users start by describing the result they want, and the software fills in the steps to get there.
The aptly named software Whetstone, which greatly reduces the amount of circuitry needed to perform autonomous tasks, is expected to improve the artificial intelligence of mobile phones, self-driving cars and automated interpretation of images.
More than 700,000 Multiple Launch Rocket System submunitions have been demilitarized since the Army started using an automated nine-robot system conceptualized, built and programmed by Sandia National Laboratories engineers.
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Volatile organic compounds can be found in the air — everywhere. A wide range of sources, including from plants, cooking fuels and household cleaners, emit these compounds directly. They also can be formed in the atmosphere through a complex network of photochemical reactions.Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories and colleagues from other institutions investigated the reactions of hydroxyl and methylperoxy radicals to understand their impact on the atmosphere’s ability to process pollutants.
Three Sandia National Laboratories researchers--Warren Davis, Quincy Johnson and Olivia Underwood--were honored at the BEYA (Black Engineer of the Year) STEM Global Competitiveness Conference for their leadership and technological achievements.
A team of Sandia social-behavioral scientists and computational modelers recently completed a two-year effort, dubbed “Mustang,” to assess interactions and behaviors of two extremist groups. The model suggested several communication options that are most likely to reduce the recruitment and violence of the extremist groups over time.
Technology Retirees Economic Catalysts (TREC) was established to connect Sandia National Laboratories retirees with small businesses that need technical and other expertise.
Controlled light can help regulate human health and productivity by eliciting various hormonal responses. Tailored LED wavelengths and intensities also can efficiently stimulate plant growth, alter their shapes and increase their nutritional value
Unlike most medical diagnostic devices which can perform only one type of test — either protein or nucleic acid tests — Sandia’s SpinDx can now perform both. This allows it to identify nearly any cause of illness, including viruses, bacteria, toxins or immune system markers of chemical agent exposure.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Quantum computing is a term that periodically flashes across the media sky like heat lightning in the desert: brilliant, attention-getting and then vanishing from the public’s mind with no apparent aftereffects.Yet a multimillion dollar international effort to build quantum computers is hardly going away.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — When people are in the early stages of an undiagnosed disease, immediate tests that lead to treatment are the best first steps. But a blood draw — usually performed by a medical professional armed with an uncomfortably large needle — might not be quickest, least painful or most effective method, according to new research.
A "friendly" electromagnetic pulse (EMP) at Sandia National Laboratories enables military users and others to better insulate their product against an energy pulse that could be set off by a nuclear weapon exploded high above the United States.
A Sandia National Laboratories employee started a Family and Friends of Addicts Support Group to give the workforce a place to talk where others "get it."
Decades ago, technical experts from the national labs responded in an ad hoc manner to accidents involving nuclear weapons, called “broken arrows.”
Thirty-two such accidents have occurred since the 1950s, so the Accident Response Group was created about five decades ago to provide technical expertise in assessing and safely resolving nuclear weapons accidents.
Sandia National Laboratories signed more Cooperative Research and Development Agreements this past fiscal year than in any previous year this century, sparking dozens of new collaborations and potential technological innovations.
Sandia and Emera Technologies are working on microgrids, small-scale versions of interconnected electric grids that locally manage energy storage and resources, such as solar, wind and thermal systems.
The number of military veterans hired at Sandia tripled the last fiscal year, and marked the highest veteran hiring rate in the history of Sandia National Laboratories.
Sandia National Laboratories, with a hypersonic wind tunnel and advanced laser diagnostic technology, is in an excellent position to help U.S. defense agencies understand the physics associated with aircraft flying five times the speed of sound.
Five Sandia National Laboratories employees with accomplishments in science, engineering, management or diversity and inclusion received career achievement and leadership awards.
A dormant volcano in Antarctica helped researchers at Sandia National Laboratories improve sensor data readings to better detect earthquakes and explosions and tune out everyday sounds such as traffic and footsteps. Finding the ideal settings for each sensor in a network to detect vibrations in the ground, or seismic activity, can be a painstaking and manual process. Researchers at Sandia are working to change that by using software that automatically adjusts the seismic activity detection levels for each sensor.
Sandia tested the new software with seismic data from the Mt. Erebus volcano in Antarctica and achieved 18 percent fewer false detections and 11 percent fewer missed detections than the original performance of the sensors on Mt. Erebus.
Typically known for work in national security, Sandia National Laboratories employs biologists who protect and monitor wildlife on lands controlled by the Department of Energy.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Department of Energy has awarded Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories $8 million for quantum research — the study of the fundamental physics of all matter — at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies.The award will fund two three-year projects enabling scientists at the two labs to build advanced tools for nanotechnology research and development.
A new rocket program could help cut research and development time for new weapons systems from as many as 15 years to less than five. Sandia National Laboratories developed the new program, called the High Operational Tempo Sounding Rocket Program, or HOT SHOT, and integrated it for its first launch earlier this year under the National Nuclear Security Administration's direction.
Sandia National Laboratories has named Mercedes Taylor and Chen Wang its first Jill Hruby Fellows. The honorees have each been awarded a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in technical leadership, comprising national security-relevant research with an executive mentor.
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Sandia National Laboratories researcher Jacqueline Chen has been elected as a fellow of the American Physical Society.This honor is afforded each year to no more than 0.5 percent of the members of the society.Chen was honored “for fundamental insights into turbulence-chemistry interactions revealed through massively parallel direct numerical simulations.
Through New Mexico Small Business Assistance, Sandia is solving technical challenges to help one company reconfigure an old ethanol plant and, in a separate project, helping a cohort of companies characterize new composite materials made from forest slash.
The longstanding mystery of soot formation, which combustion scientists have been trying to explain for decades, appears to be finally solved, thanks to research led by Sandia National Laboratories.Soot is ubiquitous and has large detrimental effects on human health, agriculture, energy-consumption efficiency, climate and air quality.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories researchers are using a blast tube configurable to 120 feet to demonstrate how well nuclear weapons could survive the shock wave of a blast from an enemy weapon and to help validate computer modeling.
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Jacqueline Chen, a distinguished member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, has been recognized with an Achievement Award from the Society of Women Engineers for her impact on the engineering community and the society.This award is the highest honor given by the society and recognizes outstanding technical contributions for at least 20 years in engineering.
LIVERMORE, Calif. — Insights from experiments at Sandia National Laboratories designed to push chemical systems far from equilibrium allowed an international group of researchers to discover a new major source of formic acid over the Pacific and Indian oceans.The discovery was published in the July 3 issue of Nature Communications and featured on the “Editors’ Highlights” webpage.
Gene editing technology could one day eliminate diseases currently considered incurable. Thanks to a new test developed by Sandia National Laboratories scientists, that day is closer to dawning.
Using computer modeling, researchers from Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are helping to develop the means to prevent some deaths from infections caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Sandia’s materials science team has engineered a platinum-gold alloy believed to be the most wear-resistant metal in the world. It’s 100 times more durable than high-strength steel, making it the first alloy, or combination of metals, in the same class as diamond and sapphire, nature’s most wear-resistant materials.
Using an artful combination of nanotechnology and basic chemistry, Sandia National Laboratories researchers have encouraged gold nanoparticles to self-assemble into unusually large supercrystals that could significantly improve detection sensitivity to chemicals in explosives or drugs.
From testing space shuttle tiles to making electricity from sunlight, the world’s first multimegawatt solar tower has contributed to energy research, space exploration, defense testing and solar energy commercialization since it was commissioned at Sandia National Laboratories in July 1978.
The solar tower is a key component of a specific type of utility-scale solar energy technology that uses hundreds of large mirrors to reflect and concentrate sunlight onto a receiver on a tower. The heat from the concentrated sunlight is absorbed by either a liquid, gas or solid and stored or used immediately in a heat exchanger to generate electricity. This type of energy, called concentrating solar power, is appealing because it can supply renewable energy — even when the sun is not shining — without using batteries for storage.
To mark the National Solar Thermal Test Facility’s 40th anniversary this month, present and past Sandia leaders and researchers, industry leaders and government represen
Sandia National Laboratories researchers have built a scaled test assembly that mimics a dry cask storage container for spent nuclear fuel to study how fuel temperatures change during storage and how the fuel’s peak temperatures affect the integrity of the metal cladding surrounding the spent fuel. Regulators could use the data to help verify computer simulations that show whether nuclear power utilities are complying with regulations that specify how much heat a dry cask can safely handle.
Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories have developed a tiny silicon-based device that can harness what was previously called waste heat and turn it into DC power.