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'Flight
simulator' for computer system administrators
Just as
flight simulators provide real-world experience to pilots without
jeopardizing lives, a new cyber security training capability under
development at DOE's Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory will give computer system administrators
experience defending against cyber attacks without compromising
their networks. PNNL scientists have created a prototype Systems
Administrator Simulation Trainer, or SAST, to rapidly develop
the cyber security experience of system administrators in any
type of organization in order that they might identify, circumvent
or recover from hacker activity. The program consists of a network
of training tools that simulate the cyber environment and are
launched through an automated system.
[Staci
Maloof, 509/372-6313,
staci.Maloof@pnl.gov]
New animal
imaging device
The Facility Fast
Electronics Group (FEG) at DOE's Thomas
Jefferson National Accelerator is collaborating with the
National Institutes of Health and the Unidad de Medicina Experimental
(Madrid, Spain) to create a new animal imaging device. "This
project is exciting and on the leading edge of medical imaging
research," says FEG leader Chris Cuevas of NIH's Advanced Technology
Laboratory Animal Scanner (ATLAS). "Our collaboration with them
on this project has been a perfect intermingling of talents
and technology." For the ATLAS device, JLab developed signal
processing amplifiers and circuit boards that will give the
scanner the ability to produce a high level of sensitivity and
high-resolution uniformity throughout the depth of the organ
or tissue being studied.
[Debbie Magaldi,
757/269-5102,
Magaldi@jlab.org]
New insights
on complex materials
Researchers from
Stanford University and
the DOE's Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center have recently pioneered a technique called
angle-resolved photoemission spectroscropy (ARPES) to study
the behavior of complex materials. In this method, a high-resolution
spectrometer detects electrons emitted from the material surface
by intense X-ray beams. ARPES has proved especially effective
in research on high-temperature superconductors, whose behavior
remains mysterious over a decade after their discovery. One
recent experiment suggests that this kind of superconductivity
may be due to the formation of electron pairs, as in ordinary
superconductors, but that a more exotic pairing mechanism is
involved.
[Michael
Riordan, 650/926-2620, michael@SLAC.Stanford.EDU]
New standard
set for scientific visualizations
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| Max
Headroom? No, even better — it’s Sandia’s David Logsted
backstage, checking alignment of 16 digitized projectors
that create an image on a 20-million-pixel screen with a
clarity that old Max would only look on with envy.
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A 10-foot-high, 13-foot-wide
screen developed at DOE's Sandia
National Laboratories produces digitized
images, created of 20 million pixels, approaching the visual
acuity of the human eye. The new screen is not only the clearest
but also, says manager and program leader Philip Heermann, "to
my knowledge the fastest in the world in rendering complex scientific
data sets." Images are as crowded, yet detailed, as if
every ear of corn on a 100-acre farm were caught in a single
image by a camera at 21,000 feet. The images are expected to
enable better views of complicated systems, such as crashes
and fires, but the facility is also valuable for microsystems,
nanotechnology, and biological explorations.
Seeing
through steel
The Portable Isotopic
Neutron Spectroscopy System (PINS),
used by the U.S. Army for the past nine years to determine
the chemical contents of weapons, is now helping with cleanup
efforts at DOE's Idaho National
Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. Instead of rusted,
half-buried artillery shells, PINS is aimed at a several hundred-gallon
stainless steel tank left in place when the Laboratory stopped
reprocessing Naval nuclear fuels. Without opening the tank,
PINS assesses whether the tank is full, empty or containing
a residue, and confirms the chemical contents. INEEL designers
of the award-winning technology plan to modify the field system
for use with buried tanks.
[Kathy Gatens,
208/526-1058,
kzc@inel.gov]
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PNNL's
Wiley explores cell signaling
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Steve
Wiley
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Steve
Wiley is a cell biologist whose passion for science is driven
by his fascination with the communications process. A
biologist by training, Steve has always been drawn to the performing
arts. He says there are many similarities between the human
communications process and the cellular communications process.
"Life
is communications. To manipulate living organisms you have to
learn how to manipulate communications. This is true whether
you are promoting a product through advertising or trying to
change cellular activity by changing its environment."
Cellular
biology has entered into a new paradigm which recognizes that
individual cell response is not necessarily hard-wired in genes
or orchestrated by central hormonal systems. Rather, cells respond
independently and flexibly to a changing environment.
New
to DOE's Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory, Steve has found himself at the forefront of
this paradigm as he leads a Laboratory initiative to understand
the cell signaling process. The initiative is a key component
of the DOE's Genomes
to Life program. "Even a simple organism is so complex that
we need to encapsulate the complexity, capture it and reduce
it so we can deal with it. Fortunately, cells are subject to
the same physical and chemical properties that govern the rest
of the universe. They followed physical laws during their evolution.
That understanding helps reduce the complexity, but it's only
the first step."
Wiley
spent 18 years on the faculty of the University
of Utah where he taught and studied. He was lured away from
academia to PNNL by the opportunity to collaborate and communicate.
"The national laboratory system is the perfect place to pursue
this branch of science," says Wiley. "It offers an opportunity
to collaborate with researchers around the country to solve
one of the most complex challenges facing science today. I couldn't
walk away from that kind of opportunity."
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