LAB REPORT
Science and Technology Making Headlines
Dec. 22, 2016
Nerds' eye view
The #MannequinChallenge viral-video sensation, in which people act frozen as if a movie were paused mid-action, has already given us some fairly iconic still-life performances. There’s the most-cool-in-school challenge video that may well have started it all.
But the title of nerdiest mannequin challenge must go to the team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who managed to pack quite a few deliciously geeky visual references into its take on the challenge.
In the video, keep an eye out for the founders of the California lab, started in 1952 for nuclear weapons research, and the work of a decidedly anti-nuclear scientist of some cosmic reputation. On the whiteboard, there are equations of fundamental importance to students of calculus, although there are others of relative uncertainty. Easter Eggs aside, there are plenty of lab coats, protective goggles, dry-ice fog and frozen rock-star swagger to make this a fun one even for the non-scientific among us.
An edible barcode
Is the olive oil you just poured over your pasta pure extra virgin olive oil from Tuscany or adulterated olive oil from Tunisia? Now there is a new technology that tracks the DNA using a barcode.
The technology originates from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which was licensed by SafeTraces in 2013. There are two pieces of equipment: the printer, which mixes and creates the DNA barcode; and the reader, a brick-sized portable device that can test and verify the source, purity and safety of fresh produce in under 10 minutes.
SafeTracers technology allows you to tag food — not the packaging — by using DNA extract from seaweed to create edible barcodes that can be sprayed on fruits and vegetables as part of the final rinse or applied as a powder on dry goods like flour or beans. The key is that there are no incremental steps in the production process. And the edible barcode is FDA-approved and a non-genetically modified organism (non-GMO).
Ring in the new compound
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists, in collaboration with University of South Florida theorists, recently reported the synthesis and equation of state of a long-sought-after five-ring nitrogen (N5) compound.
The ring-structure compounds have been notoriously elusive for the last 100 years, despite enormous efforts to make these compounds in either gas or condensed phases.
"This work provides a critical insight into the role of extreme conditions in exploring unusual bonding routes that ultimately lead to the formation of novel high nitrogen content species," said Elissaios (Elis) Stavrou, the lead LLNL physicist of this study.
Amped up on lasers
Lawrence Livermore researchers developed a new amplifier that could double the capacity of fiber-optic cables.
Most of the data for the Internet travel on fiber-optic cables, which are made up of bundles of threads that transmit laser light. As the fiber gets longer, however, power is lost due to attenuation. In the late 1980s and early '90s, researchers discovered that they could mitigate this loss by developing inline fiber-optic amplifiers.
The LLNL team discovered that from 1,390 nanometers (nm) to 1,460 nm, there is significant positive optical gain, and this new fiber generates laser power and optical gain with relatively good efficiency. This discovery opens up the potential for installed optical fibers to operate in a transmission region known as E-band -- in addition to the C and L bands where they currently operate -- effectively doubling a single optical fiber's information-carrying potential.
Lab Report takes a break
The Lab Report will take a break for the winter holidays. It will return Jan. 6