Instead of riding the range, ranchers and government agencies now can use an "eye in the sky" to determine the condition of public grazing lands. Remote sensing tools developed at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the intelligence community are being put to work by the Bureau of Land Management to help monitor and manage range land. Manual monitoring, the current practice, addresses only a fraction of public lands across the western United States. But the new, Pacific Northwest-developed satellite imagery, sensor technology and advanced geographic information systems can quickly provide data on any plot of land to help determine trends in range quality. 
 

Wind and earthquake researchers from across the United States gathered at the DOE's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in late March to discuss natural disaster hazards mitigation. INEEL's Partnership for Natural Disaster Reduction program funds research on the forces behind natural disasters in order to design affordable, disaster-resistant housing. Included in the dozen talks were studies on the response of a manufactured house to static pressure, meant to simulate a heavy wind load, and data generated at PNDR's 1/14-Scale Windstorm Center on a 1/12-scale dome home. Representatives for three insurance companies joined the engineers and scientists at the annual meeting. 
 

DOE recently announced grant recipients in its "Bridge to the Corn Ethanol Industry" initiative, which will help connect the established corn ethanol industry and the newer technologies that produce ethanol from agricultural and forest wastes and other types of biomass. Six partnerships totaling $1 million in cost shared contracts will help expand domestic ethanol production by expanding the number of economical feedstocks available to U.S. ethanol refiners. The contracts, awarded through DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, will help define the technical and economic issues in using corn stover as a primary feedstock along with corn starch in ethanol production. Corn stover is the generic term for the leaves, stalks and cobs left over when the corn plant is harvested for food. 
 

Coupling decades of research on energy efficiency with the interactivity of the web, scientists in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at the DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have created the Home Energy Saver Website to help homeowners save hundreds of dollars per year on their energy bills. Just enter a zip code, and the Energy Advisor displays energy usage and costs for a typical home in the area. Answer questions about a specific house, and the Advisor returns customized energy-saving suggestions. Other features include links to hundreds of internet sites with practical information about designs, products, utilities, and service providers, plus e-mail access to experts.
 

Scientists at DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory have refined an analytical imaging process called Mesoscale Chemical Imaging that integrates several different types of microscopic spectroscopy. The Los Alamos team has successfully integrated micro X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and electron microscopy with infrared and Raman spectroscopy. For years researchers have used these four analytical techniques separately to provide insights into elemental and molecular nature. The analysis technique can detect the physical deterioration of certain metals, polymers and other materials used in nuclear weapons or in stored nuclear materials long before any visible signs of deterioration might appear.
 

A retail development owner who wants to set an example is helping make possible a new showcase for energy efficient buildings in the Colorado high country. Ground will be broken this spring in Silverthorne on the BigHorn Home Improvement Center, which was designed with assistance from the Center for Buildings and Thermal Systems at DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. A photovoltaic-integrated standing-seam metal roof, a transpired solar collector (solar wall), daylighting, energy efficient windows and lighting, radiant heating and extra insulation throughout the development are expected to cut the center's annual energy bill by about 25% compared to a building designed to just meet federal energy codes.  
 

Computing capabilities at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory just took a giant leap forward with the acquisition of an IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer. The system will have a 1 teraop (1 trillion calculations per second) capability by the middle of next year to support computational simulations across a broad range of DOE programs that include climate modeling, vehicle design and genome analysis. "The really exciting thing about this machine isn't just the speed of its calculations, but rather the speed of the researchers rushing to use it," said Ed Cumesty, DOE Oak Ridge Operations assistant manager for laboratories.  
 

 
 
Promising approach to "tabletop fusion"

Researchers at DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are exploring a promising approach to "tabletop" fusion. They generate fusion neutrons by hitting tiny clusters of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) gas with short, intense pulses from a small-scale laser. The superheated clusters explode, driving deuterium nuclei together with enough energy to fuse. Unlike DOE inertial confinement fusion programs, which produce far more neutrons at higher efficiency using very large lasers, this is not a path to generating large amounts of fusion energy but might someday lead to compact neutron sources for materials research and for radiography, said Todd Ditmire, Livermore physicist.  
 

Emlyn Hughes may be at Cal Tech now, but the DOE's Stanford Linear Accelerator Center is equally delighted at Hughes' accomplishment. The 1999 Richard P. Feynman Prize for excellence in teaching was awarded to Hughes by the California Institute of Technology.
 
The Feynman award is given annually at Caltech to "a professor who demonstrates in the broadest sense unusual ability, creativity, and innovation in undergraduate or graduate classroom and laboratory teaching."

The Committee's citation on Hughes' teaching for this year's award reads:

For his outstanding ability to teach the mysterious nature of quantum mechanics to a broad audience as evidenced by the overwhelmingly positive student feedback from Physics 2, a core course in sophmore Physics. By combining a clear pedagogic style with an entertaining delivery, complete with frequent anecdotes on physics and life, Hughes brings a Feynman-like quality to the teaching of this difficult subject.

Hughes joined SLAC as a research associate in 1988. In 1992, he received the Panofsky Fellowship and remained at SLAC until 1995 when he joined the faculty at Caltech. At SLAC, Hughes was the spokesperson of the polarized helium-3 fixed target experiments in End Station A (E142 and E154) and is a co-spokesperson on the upcoming End Station A experiment, E158.

Emlyn is only the second physics professor at Caltech to receive the award. The first was Tom Tombrello, who is currently the chairman of the Caltech physics department.

SLAC and Cal Tech both offer congratulations to the winner in recognition of his outstanding skill and look forward to many inspired students coming to SLAC for research in the future.

Submitted by DOE's Stanford Linear Accelerator Center