Oak Ridge Today

Water advisory sent to wrong Clinton; city says water clean, safe to drink

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

Clinton City Manager Roger Houck on Sunday said an apparent misrouting of information may be the reason at least one city resident received a “Notice of Water Advisory” this weekend.

“We have confirmed that the Web address and phone information included in the advisory is for Clinton, Utah…not Tennessee,” Houck said in a press release. “When you go to the Utah website, you will see that they, indeed, have issued an advisory for their area.”

A woman who lives on Mariner Point Drive in Clinton, Tennessee, told officials that she received an email and a phone call saying that local water samples had tested positive for E. coli, and customers should assume the water is unsafe to drink unless it is boiled. [Read more…]

TDEC orders Oliver Springs to fix treatment plant or face fine

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

Information from WYSH Radio

The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation has ordered Oliver Springs to upgrade its wastewater treatment plant or face a hefty fine. The state gave the town until August 31, 2015, to correct the problems outlined in the order, including several violations in the past few years dealing with system overflows and E. coli contamination.

The plant discharged water into Poplar Creek.

If the problems are not corrected by the end of August 2015, the town could face a fine of up to $175,000.

The state also issued a moratorium on adding any new sewer customers. [Read more…]

Supercomputers help ORNL researchers identify molecular switch that controls cell behavior

Posted at
By Leave a Comment

E. coli Chemoreceptor Switch

Red and blue molecules represent a conformational switch essential to the signaling mechanism of an E. coli chemoreceptor that researchers discovered using computational molecular dynamics simulations. (Image credit: Davi Ortega)

If scientists can control cellular functions such as movement and development, they can cripple cells and pathogens that are causing disease in the body.

Supported by National Institutes of Health grants, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee, and the UT-ORNL Joint Institute for Computational Sciences discovered a molecular “switch” in a receptor that controls cell behavior using detailed molecular dynamics simulations on a computer called Anton built by D.E. Shaw Research in New York City. To study an even larger signaling complex surrounding the switch, the team is expanding these simulations on Titan—the nation’s most powerful supercomputer, managed by the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at ORNL.

Researchers identified the molecular switch on Anton (which was designed to perform speedy molecular dynamics simulations) by simulating 140,000 atoms that make up the signaling part of the Tsr chemoreceptor that controls motility in E. coli. Like other receptors, Tsr spans the cell membrane, communicating to proteins inside the cell in order to respond to threats or opportunities in the environment. [Read more…]