By Janie Shanafield, Jefferson Middle School
Jefferson Middle School FIRST Lego League teams hosted the 8th annual Atomic City Invitational on January 15. Area teams were invited to participate in the FIRST Lego League Cargo Connect challenge and alliance challenge, sumo bots, and Lego Great Ball Contraption. Fifteen area teams entered 45 robots into the events.
The winners were as follows:
[Read more…]
Cymbeline “Bem” Culiat
A former molecular geneticist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory will discuss regenerative medicine and a potential treatment for severe COVID-19 disease patients and those who struggle with “long haul” symptoms.
The talk by Cymbeline “Bem” Culiat—co-founder, president, and chief science officer of NellOne Therapeutics in Knoxville—will speak virtually to Friends of ORNL at noon Tuesday, February 8.
“While at ORNL, Culiat discovered the role of the NELL1 signaling protein in fostering the growth and maturation of musculoskeletal and cardiovascular tissues in mice and other mammals, including humans,” a press release said. “Her biotech company focuses on using her discovery to advance regenerative medicine, which involves replacing, engineering, or regenerating human or animal cells, tissues, or organs to promote healing and restore normal function. In contrast, traditional medicine typically provides treatment of symptoms rather than addressing root causes.”
To view the virtual lecture, click on the talk title on the homepage of the www.fornl.org website and click on the Zoom link near the top of the page describing the lecture. Here is Culiat’s summary of what she will talk about: [Read more…]
Oak Ridge National Laboratory employees received Department of Energy Secretary’s Honor Awards from Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in January for their work on projects related to computer tools and classified information, a new alloy, and the production of plutonium-238 and special components for the Mars Perseverance rover.
The annual awards recognized 21 teams and three individuals for service and contributions to DOE’s mission and to the benefit of the nation, a press release said. More than 50 current employees and recent retirees from ORNL received awards.
“The Department of Energy’s core mission—promoting scientific discovery, maintaining the nuclear deterrent, and remediating environmental harms—have never been more important,” Granholm said. “Our role in tackling the climate emergency and ensuring America’s continued security and prosperity is absolutely critical, and it could not be done without the dedicated and diverse team of world-class scientists, engineers, policy experts, and mission support personnel employed at our headquarters, fields sites, and laboratories across the country.”
The teams and ORNL employees named in achievement awards include:
[Read more…]The University of Tennessee Arboretum Society will host a presentation next week about bird courtship and pair bonding.
The First Thursday Nature Supper Club program is titled “Love is in the Air.” It is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. Thursday, February 3.
“Though it is only February, bird courtship has begun,” a press release said. “Male birds vie for the attention of the females in a variety of ways. We will explore what all that cooing is about!”
“You provide your own stay-at-home supper, and we provide the nature as local naturalist Stephen Lyn Bales will entertain and teach us via Zoom what counts for beauty in the avian world,” the press release said. “We will look at many species. Great horned owls are the first to start courtship rituals, while cedar waxwings typically do not begin their pair bonding until June.”
[Read more…]
Ten scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory are among the world’s most highly cited researchers, according to a bibliometric analysis conducted by the scientific publication analytics firm Clarivate.
The annual list identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their field through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade. These researchers authored publications that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science citation index.
“Researchers at ORNL are leading the advancement of scientific knowledge in multiple fields,” ORNL Director Thomas Zacharia said in a press release. “This recognition demonstrates that the laboratory and our scientists are engaged in cutting-edge research and development to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges.”
The ORNL scientists listed are:
The Summit supercomputer, an IBM system that is the world’s second-most powerful, is pictured above at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo courtesy Katie Bethea/ORNL)
The Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory remained the fastest system in the United States and the second-most powerful in the world in the biannual TOP500 list released Monday.
Fugaku in Kobe, Japan, remained No. 1, where it has been since June 2020. The 442-petaflop system has been at the top of the list four consecutive times.
Summit, an IBM system, was the world’s most powerful supercomputer from June 2018 to November 2019, when the U.S. Department of Energy had the two fastest systems in the world. DOE still has the second and third most powerful supercomputers, Summit at number two and Sierra at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California at number three.
Fugaku is installed at the Riken Center for Computational Science. It was co-developed by Riken and Fujitsu, and it has 7,630,848 cores. It is based on Fujitsu’s custom ARM A64FX processor, TOP500 said. Fugaku uses a Fujitsu interconnect known as Tofu D to transfer data between nodes.
TOP500 said Fugaku’s 442-petaflop performance on a benchmark test makes it three times as powerful as Summit, which has 2,414,592 cores. The TOP500 list uses a benchmark test to rank the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
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The Summit supercomputer, an IBM system that is the world’s second-most powerful, is pictured above at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo courtesy Katie Bethea/ORNL)
The Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory remained the fastest system in the United States and the second-most powerful in the world in the biannual TOP500 list released Monday.
Fugaku in Kobe, Japan, remained No. 1, where it has been since June 2020. The 442-petaflop system has been at the top of the list four consecutive times.
Summit, an IBM system, was the world’s most powerful supercomputer from June 2018 to November 2019, when the U.S. Department of Energy had the two fastest systems in the world. DOE still has the second and third most powerful supercomputers, Summit at number two and Sierra at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California at number three.
Fugaku is installed at the Riken Center for Computational Science. It was co-developed by Riken and Fujitsu, and it has 7,630,848 cores. It is based on Fujitsu’s custom ARM A64FX processor, TOP500 said. Fugaku uses a Fujitsu interconnect known as Tofu D to transfer data between nodes.
TOP500 said Fugaku’s 442-petaflop performance on a benchmark test makes it three times as powerful as Summit, which has 2,414,592 cores. The TOP500 list uses a benchmark test to rank the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
The rest of this story is available if you are a member: a subscriber, advertiser, or contributor to Oak Ridge Today. Already a member? Great! Thank you! Sign in here. Not a member? No problem! Subscribe here: Basic
Pro
Temporary
If you prefer to send a check, you may do so by mailing one to: Oak Ridge Today P.O. Box 6064 Oak Ridge, TN 37831 We also have advanced subscription options. You can see them here. We also accept donations. You can donate here. A donation of $50 or more will make you eligible for a subscription. Thank you for reading Oak Ridge Today. We appreciate your support!
Thomas Harrison
Thomas Harrison, a group leader at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will give an overview this evening of the work that ORNL performs for NASA’s space nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) program, a press release said.
ORNL performs research on materials, fuels, instrumentation and control components and techniques, and systems analysis, all of which are vital to the successful deployment of NTP, the press release said. Harrison will also describe some of the challenges facing the technology and the methods that ORNL researchers are using to overcome them.
Harrison is currently the Advanced Nuclear System Safety and Licensing Group Leader at ORNL, the press release said. [Read more…]
NASA has selected Oak Ridge Associated Universities to provide the agency with administrative support and coordination of research opportunities between NASA’s mission directorates and centers across the agency.
The NASA Postdoctoral Program 2 (NPP-2) contract is a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract with a maximum potential value of approximately $129.7 million. The one-year base performance period begins September 9, 2021, and it is followed by four one-year options, which would end September 8, 2026, NASA said in a press release.
[Read more…]Jupiter and Saturn will appear to come together in the night sky this evening, as the two bright planets closely align and Jupiter overtakes Saturn, from our vantage point, in its orbit around the Sun.
It’s an astronomical event known as the “Great Conjunction.” It’s also popularly known as the “Christmas Star,” according to NASA.
Tonight (Monday, December 21) will be the culmination of the planetary conjunction.
[Read more…]
Note: This story was last updated at 3 p.m. June 24.
A Japanese supercomputer has displaced the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as the world’s most powerful and bumped other U.S. and Chinese machines down one spot on a semiannual list of the fastest systems.
Summit had been ranked the world’s most powerful supercomputer on the semiannual TOP500 list since June 2018. It was bumped to number two when the new TOP500 list was released Monday.
The new top system is installed in Kobe, Japan, and it is named Fugaku. In a high-performance test, it performed at 415.5 petaflops. A petaflop is a quadrillion floating-point operations per second.
Fugaku’s performance was 2.8 times better than Summit’s, according to TOP500. Summit delivered 148.8 petaflops on the high-performance test.
[Read more…]
A researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory helped discover a small cave snail.
The new snail species has been named the Tennessee cavesnail, or Antrorbis tennesseensis. Its name honors the state where it was found and the fact that several researchers involved in its discovery are affiliated with the University of Tennessee. A paper describing and naming the species was published in December.
The snail, which is less than two millimeters long, was found in two caves in Roane County a few miles south of the Oak Ridge Reservation. The reservation includes ORNL and parts of the city of Oak Ridge.
The snail is found on or under rocks far inside the caves, usually in streams that aren’t too muddy or silty, ORNL said. Researchers recommended that the species be listed as endangered.
The ORNL researcher is Evin Carter. He is a research associate and wildlife ecologist at ORNL, which is a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory. With only a handful of surveys completed so far, Carter has plans to survey the 40 or so other caves on the Oak Ridge Reservation, ORNL said.
[Read more…]The U.S. Department of Energy has proposed an isotope production and research center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory that could be important for medical, national security, and research projects.
In a budget request released in February, DOE said its supply of certain key enriched stable isotopes has been depleted, making the United States more dependent upon foreign imports for enriched stable isotopes. Isotopes are forms of an element that have the same number of protons but different number of neutrons in their nuclei.
DOE said the demand for enriched stable isotopes continues to grow substantially, including for the medical, national security, and fundamental research projects.
The new center at ORNL, the U.S. Stable Isotope Production and Research Center, would reduce the nation’s dependence upon foreign countries for those isotopes, DOE said.
DOE approved the mission need for the facility in January 2019. Although the cost range could change, the current project estimate is between $175 million and $298 million.
[Read more…]