Science at LANL

Finally, some science at LANL

2010-06-20T08:10:00.002-06:00

John Singleton and colleagues created a set of electrical circuits that generated a EM wavefront that moved at greater than the speed of light. Since the particles that generated this EM wave were not moving faster than light, relativity was not violated. The wave that was generated this way propagated and follow the expected behavior of EM waves moving at the speed of light.

Demand driven blog

2010-04-10T14:43:00.000-06:00

If people put up comments, I will put up new posts.

The retirement of LANL: the rest of the story

2010-01-20T12:56:00.002-07:00

If people want to continue to post information about LANL once the other blog closes, they can post it here.

Beyond the standard civility constraints of a blog, here are the rules.

I am not posting things to fill up space.
I will post things that are relevant to the future of LANL workers and Northern New Mexico.
If someone wants to help out, I welcome it.
Non substantive comments will be deleted
Anonymous postings or comments are allowed.
Non anonymous postings and comments are much preferred.
Ad hominem attacks will never get posted as comments.

Science leaving LANL

2009-12-22T15:10:00.002-07:00

I am getting more and more requests for physicists, mathematicians, and computer programmers--the kind who used to be at LANL.

The requesters are offering jobs in interesting industries.

2009-08-09T10:29:00.002-06:00

I am trying out a new blog, Getting there from here.
This one will be disassembled. Pieces may show up on the new one.

The two main rationales for the new blog are:

Very little cutting edge science that I care about is being done at LANL anymore. I can't see a rejuvenation of cutting edge science at LANL.
There are lots of new science topics to discuss and lots of ways to make a blog more effective, ways that cannot be implemented well on either Facebook or Twitter.

We will see how this effort turns out.

Memory and locality

2009-07-08T13:28:00.002-06:00

A while ago, I put up a post about how the workings of memory all had to be local.

I have had a working prototype for about a year now. Mostly this prototype is letting me keep track of references, documents, pictures, etc. in a flexible, dynamic, non-database format.

Each operation that I do each day is local to the folder that I am in. The operations change many things when viewed globally, but I as a user am not aware of this global structure nor do I need to be aware of it. The local actions accomplish all that I need.

Pretty cool.

(As you may guess, details of what is going on are shared privately and not on this blog.)

Science not at LANL

2009-07-08T12:31:00.002-06:00

Since last fall, I have ignored this blog and my other ones.

The reason: I am starting two new companies, Efficient Engines and Cognitive Architectures for Learning. The first company is making a highly efficient engine for the power industry. This engine will run on solar or other fuels and will, initially, come in 20 and 40 MW sizes. The second company is in final testing of software/hardware based on a clear understanding of human memory. This product is unobtrusive and appears to go faster than the nominal quantum limit. The first application will allow people's computers to appear to run much faster.

I follow this blog.

If you want more information than is here, email or call me.

Cheers

Science?

2008-08-24T20:55:00.001-06:00

We may be getting to a turning point at LANL, a turning point for the better.

We should know in a month or so.

Images

2008-08-24T07:38:00.002-06:00

A standard image can be considered to be a two dimensional set of pixels. In a black and white image, each pixel can have any of 256 values.

This description of an image can be extended in a number of ways. First, we can assign 4 pixels to each point of the image. If one of the pixels corresponds to the original black and white sensing pixel and the other three have frequency dependence maximized at red, green, and blue, then we can create a standard color image.

The image can be extended into more dimensions by assigning values to the dimensions and to the pixels within each dimension. The images that a normal human body creates, second by second, appear to be these high dimensional, large number of sensors, images.

Then the brain has to extract meaning, in real time, from these complex images.

Renewable energy

2008-08-14T07:28:00.002-06:00

It is interesting to me how far apart news reports, which act as if the country could run on solar or wind power tomorrow, and reality are. In reality, coal and oil will dominate (86%) energy production for decades.

Walter Skotchdopole

2008-08-08T08:14:00.002-06:00

In today's New Scientist, there is an article about Walter Skotchdopole who has Alzheimer's disease.

Walter was not functioning well and was disconnected from reality.

Then he was treated with an anti-inflammatory drug normally used to treat arthritis.

His brain works much better.

Why does reduction in inflammation increase the clarity of thought?

Nanoinks

2008-08-07T07:57:00.002-06:00

Long ago, I did a traditional undergraduate physical chemistry experiment. I made a monolayer of of material that floated on water, a Langmuir Blodgett film. The molecules that formed this monolayer had polar groups at one end, alcohols or organic acids, and non polar groups at the other end, usually hydrocarbons. The polar groups would all align next to the water layer while the non polar groups would be as far away from the water layer as chemical bonding would allow.

If I make two layers of the molecules on water, and do a couple of other tricks, I get bilayers, often lipid bilayers the stuff of cell walls.

Now this monolayer approach has been taken a step further. If I pattern the monolayer, by binding the lipid end to a nanopatterned stamp, a stamp created by electron beam etching of a polymerized siloxane (see Xia and Whitesides for a good review), I get a patterned layer instead of a uniform monolayer.

This patterned layer can act as a coating, similar to a photoresist, to allow the nano pattern to be reproduced on a new surface. The lipids, actually amphilic molecules, are now called nanoinks and can be used to create surfaces that are very expensive to create by traditional methods such as e-beam carving.

New topics

2008-08-04T13:50:00.002-06:00

Micron level flow patterns
New composites
Young's modulus
Neurobiology
Genetics of sensory systems
Multiphase complex systems
Control systems
Digital photography

Apropos the demise of world class science at LANL

2008-08-01T06:18:00.001-06:00

"This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang, but a whimper."

T.S. Eliot "The Hollow Men"

Makeover

2008-07-31T15:40:00.002-06:00

This blog will get a makeover, not an extreme makeover but sort of a sashay makeover. Since, for the most part science at LANL has either died or is on life support, the blog will be retitled something fun like 'Cool technical shit' and will be devoted to parts of cutting edge science from whatever source.

Maybe there should be a memorial party for science at LANL, everyone can be anonymous and not come. ;-D

Memristors

2008-05-01T16:07:00.001-06:00

Anyone out there understand the functioning of memristors and is willing to share?

Science at LANL 2

2008-04-29T16:11:00.002-06:00

The engine project, the learning and memory project and the photography projects are going well and are consuming most of my science time.

The history of Los Alamos

2008-04-04T07:47:00.002-06:00

Photography is one of the things that I do. At the moment, I am making a CD showing the history of Los Alamos from the settlements by early Pueblo people through now.

I am looking for suggestions about the optimal way to lay out this CD and present the information to buyers. If you want to help me or just see the progress on the CD or see other pictures, follow the link above.

Projects breaking

2008-03-27T12:44:00.003-06:00

The projects on novel engines, learning and memory, and photography are getting much more serious. They are improving daily.

I am looking for people across a range of skill sets to help make the projects go faster. If you have skills that may be useful or if you just want to know more about what the projects are, contact me soon.

I moved to Los Alamos long ago to be part of projects that were this exciting and moved at this speed. Now, I am. It is very exciting.

Later.

Progress

2008-03-21T11:30:00.000-06:00

The prototype for learning and memory is running well and quickly.
The alternative engine stuff has also progressed far and is courting investment dollars.

B mesons

2008-03-19T08:53:00.002-06:00

In today's New Scientist, there is an article about flipping particles.

B mesons consist of a bottom quark and an anti-strange quark. It turns out that the bottom becomes an anti-strange and the anti-strange becomes a bottom. This exchange occurs one trillion times a second. The change appears to be mediated by some boson that noone has seen before.

The exchange violates CP conservation.

So the standard model of particle physics may need revision.

Alternative energy institute

2008-03-14T08:46:00.002-06:00

I went to a meeting yesterday and talked with Miro about an alternative energy institute that is forming in Espanola. Miro is knowledgeable, serious, and driven. He is looking for talent.

There is a lot of talent in Los Alamos that could help institute become a major player nationwide.

A kaon

2008-03-06T17:28:00.002-07:00

I am still thinking about particle physics. Things are getting 'curiouser and curiouser.'

Stenger was one of the first few people to see the tracks left by a kaon (for instance, a particle talked about as the fusion of an anti-strange and a down quark). Tracks, however, like those left by a fox in the snow, are what are seen after the fox is gone not while the fox is around.

The length of a kaon track (ignoring relativistic effects) is 10^-15 seconds long. So this particle does not exist for very long. If I think of the track a little more, then I notice that the track has footprints in it. The first set of footprints is the footprints of the down quark going forward in time. Right next to these footprints are the footprints of the anti-strange quark coming the other way. The footprints are right next to each other. They are apparently held next to each other by a depression in the snow-the nuclear strong force.

Where these quarks come from and where they go after this little stroll down the same trail in the snow, I don't know. Why the antistrange appears at the right time and does the pas de deux with the down, I also do not know.

Can anyone help me with some comprehension?

Particles and the void

2008-02-25T15:48:00.006-07:00

Another insight from Stenger.

All that exists are particles and the void. There are photons, leptons, and bosons. There may be gravitons. These particles all interact with each other at the speed of light and follow SU3 symmetry. Beyond these particles, nothing else exists. The fields that were presented in introductory physics - electromagnetic fields, gravitational fields, temperature fields - do not exist only the particle-particle interactions do. Calculus is not reality but is a pre-computer approximation of reality. Calculus helped scientists make progress on understanding reality before we had large computers that help us understand reality faster.

A high energy anti-photon (a photon moving backward in time and having negative energy) can knock an electron backwards in time (giving the electron negative energy) making it appear as a positron in a detector.

The elephant and the event horizon

2008-02-21T14:10:00.002-07:00

From Jeremy Susskind at Stanford by way of New Scientist.

If you drop an elephant with a rider on it into a black hole, an observer outside the black hole sees the elephant not go through the event horizon. The rider on the elephant safely goes through the event horizon.

The elephant is 'actually' in both places, even if the places are many light years apart.

Part of the underlying theory comes from Juan Maldacenas and includes holographic projections of the universe.

Space time

2008-02-19T15:35:00.002-07:00

I am now into Stenger's book as far as the topics of conservation of energy, angular momentum, etc.
The last chapter was on the summation over all possible histories that would constitute an observed event.
It is disconcerting that the only real way to consider these events is to remove the axes from the drawing so that time and the other directions are equivalent and so that 'forward' time and 'reverse' time are interchangeable.

It is going to take a while for these new perspectives to sink in.

Virtual particles is another difficult concept for me.

Timeless reality

2008-02-18T08:26:00.002-07:00

I am reading a book, Timeless Reality, by Victor Stenger, the former head of the physics department at the University of Hawaii.

From the point of view of the history of physics; especially quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, and beyond; it is a fascinating book. I never understood why there were terms in quantum mechanics that went to infinity and that were set to 0. Now, I do, sort of. I never understood the sum over histories approach to quantum interactions. Now, I do, sort of.

The book is slow reading because it is technically dense. The author assumes that the readers know most of philosophy and much of current quantum physics. There are probably not many readers who know these things at the depth that the author assumes a reader should have.

There is another story in the book, a post modern story, a story that has been played out in Los Alamos since the '40s. In this story, individual theoretical physicists are the heroes of mankind going on their mathematical journey to find 'reality.' In this story, none of the rest of the universe--people, trees, families, money, society exists. World War II is covered in less than a paragraph. It was an event that distracted theoretical physicists from the pursuit of reality. Chemistry, biology, et al. are dismissed in a single line (of a 400 page book). Experimentalists are dismissed as necessary servants of the philosopher king - the theoretical physicist.

An interesting part, to me, and to steal Wojciech Zurek's notion of decoherence, is that an initial state of theoretical physicist kings supported by peons (the rest of us) established in the '40s will decay (with 100% certainty) to the Los Alamos that we see today. Entities like LockMart, Congress, LANS, Nanos, Agnew, etc. are the agents in the decay (like the atoms that make Brownian motion); but they are not the cause of the decay. These agents determine the rate of decay when viewed day by day but not when viewed decade by decade. The cause of the decay, just as the cause of time's apparent arrow, is the initial condition of the system--the inflation of the power of theoretical physicists in a new small town in New Mexico in the 1940s. The decay itself comes from the interaction of this isolated town with a changing earth outside the town.

Comments?

Fun

2008-02-13T06:12:00.001-07:00

Over the last two weeks, I focused on non-LANL things.

So, this weekend I went to the East coast to raise some money for a new company that will produce a breakthrough engine.

I had fun.

Complex transformation

2008-01-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

I have been asked to comment on transformation of the nuclear weapons complex. I have an environmental impact statement draft to comment on. If you want to help, let me know.

More details at the workingatlanl blog.

A cautionary tale

2008-01-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

A number of people have commented that Director Anastasio should be removed. Here is an example from the Los Angeles Times of what happens when the leader resists firing people. The leader is fired and replaced with a leader who will fire people.

LANL Science

2008-01-17T12:12:00.000-07:00

One person on LANL:The Rest of the Story started to list science successes. He or she listed mostly big projects that failed and that were directly weapons related. Here are some that I know about and that succeeded. Please add to the list.

The many R&D 100 award winning projects
Secure labels
The Human Genome Project
Parts of the biology of radiation damage
Numerous approaches and computer codes in fluid dynamics
Single molecule detection
Preparation of organic compounds with labeled isotopes
GenBank
Lots of physics in the '70s.
Plutonium chemistry
High end machining
Supercritical extraction and cleaning
Near field microscopy
Designing or testing much of leading edge computer hardware and software
High speed computer networks
Accurate predictions from very large simulations of physical processes
Novel photonic materials
High field magnet studies
Low temperature magnetic studies of the brain
Weather forecasting
Wildfire forecasting
Detailed models of combustion in automobiles
High density energy storage
Fuel cell design
Anyons
Modeling of the evolution of the universe
Desktop based supercomputers
Radio frequency identification
Quantum gravity
Quark dynamics
Detailed analysis of world energy usage
Highest speed computer network data transmission
Computer security
Computer operating systems
Beryllium, uranium and plutonium chemistry
Space weather
Sensors of many kinds
Satellite design, especially sensors and now using FPGAs
hot dry rocks
Bioinformatics
The large number of former LANL staff (TSMs, technicians, post docs, and students) who have been successful elsewhere.
Approximately $30,000,000,000 into Northern New Mexico that would have gone elsewhere.
The atom bomb
The hydrogen bomb
The subterfuge that was Star Wars (the physics was not possible but the politics worked)
Using LANL as a backdrop to intimidate bad guys around the world.
Various aspects of superconductivity
An understanding of gamma ray bursts
Various aspects of building and understanding nanotubes
Models of the flow of heat and materials in the earth's core.

This is just a start. I am adding more continuously. Some of the topics are directly science, others are a mixture of science, politics, academics, and business.

Cleaning up uranium contamination

2008-01-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

Here is an article from New Scientist on a large organic molecule, a macrocycle, that can trap uranium ions and, possibly, remove them from solution. The authors' next ion target is plutonium.

Driving out the talented

2008-01-17T08:33:00.000-07:00

Here is an article from Slate. It talks about the Army losing young talented officers who would like to make the Army better.

It seems that I have heard this story before. Last time I heard it the story was about National Labs.

Global science cities

2008-01-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

For those who want Los Alamos to become stronger in cutting edge science, listen to this week's Scientific American podcast or read the February issue of the magazine. Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University has gotten a monkey in North Carolina to use the pattern of neural firings in its brain to control a robot in Japan and make it walk.

Nicolelis is establishing science cities around the world and talking at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Nicolelis wants to show the potential of bringing up children to reach their potential mental capabilities. The first city will be in Natal in the northeast corner of Brazil.

New posts

2008-01-16T11:06:00.000-07:00

I have ignored this blog for a while. I have been working on doing science.

Some of the projects that I have been working on are:

Placing scientists and technicians in other jobs.
Using the working prototype of 'learning and memory' to get tasks done very quickly.
Designing and building a much more efficient engine.
Finding out whether Major League Baseball really wants a detector for Human Growth Hormone or not.
Completing the next CDs of pictures of the area.

In all of these tasks, I need more people to talk to and to help to make things. If you are interested in learning what is going on or in helping some of these tasks go faster, let me know.

More jobs

2008-01-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

CEO, COO, CSO, CTO and many others.

Some require technical backgrounds. Many don't.

A few are local.

Many of them require a strong work ethic, a willingness to learn new skills, a consistent meeting of hard deadlines, and ambition.

The reward structures for the jobs appear to be good.

I moved this to the top again. There are still lots of openings. I am filling them from beyond Los Alamos for lack of enough local applicants.

Per request - My phone is 505-662-3115. My email is eric.fairfield@gmail.com

Updated

Learning and memory 2

2007-12-21T09:57:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, when I had this insight about how learning and memory might work, I went "Ah, this is really interesting and not like computer science."

Now that I am building and running various models of learning and memory, I realize that:

My insight of two years ago was good but naive.
The brain works in ways for which there are few words that function well in describing it.

hgh

2007-12-19T20:22:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the people who contacted me. I had the phone conference. The next step appears to be starting talks with Olympic testing laboratories.

A Los Alamos Research Institute

2007-12-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I have talked with people, locally and non-locally, about establishing a research institute similar to Bell Labs or the Roche Institute.

With the layoffs, this discussion has started up again.

If you want to be part of the current discussion, contact me.

An immediate need

2007-12-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

I have an immediate need for information on detecting human growth hormone and steroids, either the biology or the instrumentation.

I need to know more than I do by about 8AM tomorrow morning.

Thanks.

A mechanistic thought

2007-12-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

My developing model for what a mind actually does in learning new things makes interesting predictions.

One class of predictions that it makes is about having new thoughts.

For instance, a prediction is that for LANL folk to work together for the benefit of themselves and the Lab will not happen because old habits of independence and lack of trust of others are too ingrained.

The new prediction, however, is not the one above, which can be made from the study of human behavior.

The new prediction is that 'ingrained' can be correlated with the number of synapses that must be changed in order for a 'new thought' to become habitual behavior. The new prediction tells how to think quantitatively about words like 'new thought', 'ingrained', 'pleasing,' and 'comfort zone' in terms of changes in synapses and neurons.

We will see where these testable predictions lead.

Learning and memory

2007-12-13T16:41:00.001-07:00

To implement a viable computational version of this is even trickier than you might think.

There are all these subtle but critical implementation details that nature has solved but I have not.

For instance, there is much more 'computation' and much more creation and destruction than I thought there would be to get to a stable smart system.

This creation and destruction seems to be analogous to semiparallel computation on a huge scale.

Later

Actual science

2007-11-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

The efficient engine is close to running and being tested.
The approach to memory and learning that seems to avoid previous mistakes is up and running and being tested on libraries of photographs.

Patenting

2007-11-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

Is there anyone out there who knows the details of patenting strategy?

If so, please contact me.

Science near LANL 2

2007-11-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

There is a fair amount of science going on near LANL but not in it. Here are a few topics:

Early history of the earth
Sensitive detection and sorting of novel drugs
Functional models of early brain development
Portable high resolution spectral sensors
Next generation engines
Various green energy projects
Commercial fuel cells

A new name for the blog

2007-10-31T10:28:00.000-06:00

Maybe I should call it

"Science formerly at LANL"
"Science that should be at LANL"
or
"What are we thinking?"

The Manhattan Project

2007-10-30T07:52:00.000-06:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/science/30manh.html?8dpc=&_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

The Manhattan project had strong roots in Manhattan.

Job openings - examples

2007-10-26T15:47:00.000-06:00

New PhD.

Datamining in large data sets.

Private company.

Engineers - many kinds, many levels
Support staff - lots of kinds
Chemists, physicists (especially with bio training)
Mathematicians
Computer scientists

Mission versus Science

2007-10-25T18:16:00.000-06:00

I have heard a number of people say that we have to focus on mission work for our customers and not on science. This statement confuses me. I have read all the mission statements and the vision statements. The statements seem to be a laundry list of all of science and mathematics. So the mission is "Do whatever we can be paid to do." Another viewpoint, prevalent within Los Alamos county, is that the mission of the Lab is the design and testing of nuclear weapons components, period.

Yet, outside the county, there are many people who say that the Cold War is over and has been over for a long time. These people feel that the Lab has no mission except to spend money to preserve itself and the jobs of the people who send it money.

Is there a detailed statement of a mission that is neither completely broad not self defeatingly narrow and without platitudes that justifies the continued existence and health of the lab? Many people across the country, including Senator Domenici on the 12th of January 2006, have asked for an articulate answer, preferably really soon.

I have one statement of such a mission that people can have if they ask for it.

Originally posted June 2005
Then reposted in January 2006.
It seems that things change slowly here.

Coalition of the Willing

2007-10-25T10:47:00.000-06:00

With apologies to President Bush et al. for stealing the term, I have been having the following thoughts.

After the contract renewal, it is likely that there will be many retirees or near retirees who will no longer be paid to work many hours at the Lab (ask for details on this one). A fraction of these retirees will still want to keep their hand in technically and not start a second career in catering, gardening, or origami.

What will these people do once the boredom sets in?

So, for whomever is willing, I would like to start a discussion about how to keep technically alive after retirement. Three suggestions so far have been:
1. Form a club that then figures out what to do next.
2. Start a venture capital fund with a specific charter that works for the members.
3. Start an institute that would get funding and do experimental and theoretical science relevant to the local skill set.

Comments?
Potential workers?

The comments and discussions on this topic will be either on line or off line as appropriate.

Thanks,

Oringally posted 29 August 2006

Bacterial satellites

2007-10-22T11:56:00.000-06:00

Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory swabbed clean rooms at NASA. These clean rooms were the sterile areas in which NASA personnel would assemble satellites.

Unfortunately, the bacteria could not read the 'Sterile' signs. There were 100 culturable kinds of bacteria in the sterile rooms. Forty five of these kinds of bacteria had never before been seen by scientists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/science/09clea.html?ref=science

new jobs

2007-10-21T15:23:00.000-06:00

Got called today.

Two jobs.

One a Ph.D. algorithm inventor.
One high quality programmer.

A phoenix

2007-10-20T14:56:00.000-06:00

With really good scientists leaving LANL, it would appear that their might be an opportunity to use these scientists or their science to create significant wealth by f0rming new companies.

There is such an opportunity.

The opportunity, however, is complex. Some of these scientists have technical ideas that would form excellent companies. Most of the scientist however do not yet have the mindset that would make the success of such companies easy.

They need not only the traditional capital. They need a carefully chosen management team including at least one person who understands the care and handling of these valuable people.

Jobs openings elsewhere

2007-10-18T15:08:00.001-06:00

A couple more folk emailed me today looking for the kind of talent that LANL staff might provide.

I have, on average, 200 job openings around the country for which people are contacting me. I try to fill them with whomever fits.

Making sense

2007-10-17T17:39:00.001-06:00

Less and less of what appears to go on at the Lab is making sense to me.

If LANS is running in deficit at $300,000,000 a year where is this money coming from?
If the RIFs can be put off, who will pay the people?
If the RIFs are not carefully done, what happens to nuclear expertise and national security?
If people are fired at random here, what conclusions should other government workers draw from this?
Why would someone want to work for the government as a scientist?
Why would Bechtel keep people and delay buildings since Bechtel is a building company not a people company?
If the people who know how to handle nuclear materials are let go, who will handle them?
If you can work for the government for your entire career and then be discarded for petty politics, why work for the government?

Anyone capable of answering these questions?

Cutting edge science

2007-10-17T14:43:00.001-06:00

Cutting edge science is really fun.

Nanotubes

2007-10-16T18:16:00.000-06:00

I now know ten or so groups around the US who are studying nanotubes and trying to make novel devices from them.

This work is really exciting.

Two timing

2007-10-14T18:56:00.001-06:00

A guy named Bars at UCLA has proposed that there are actually two time axes in space time.

Science near LANL

2007-10-04T12:03:00.001-06:00

While I have given up on leading edge science at LANL, I have not given up on leading edge science. Here are a few of the topics that I am working on or discussing beyond this blog.

What is time? Photons and G-d are said to exist outside of time. What does this mean? This discussion has led to 'redshift', 'quantum gravity', the early inflation of the universe, string theory, and quantum loop gravity.
Why do people often constrain their behavior to locally rational actions and strongly resist actions that are more beneficial with a wider viewpoint?
What are emotions for, from a biological and computational point of view?
Can a person really make a computer that operates routinely beyond the nominal quantum limit?
What lessons are there to learn from Riemannian manifolds that might apply to biology?
Translation - constantly, from daily conversations to M-theory, we fall prey to the difficulties of making accurate translations. How can we learn to translate more accurately, especially when the words that another person uses are words that we know but the other person is using them with very different meanings.

Interactive blogging

2007-10-04T12:01:00.000-06:00

It is clear that I do not have a strong need to post stuff on a blog.

I seem to be an interactive blogger.

When there is a topic that appears to be of interest to potential readers and that I need to write down in order to understand it, then I will make a post.

Otherwise I won't post.

Whither science

2007-10-04T09:54:00.000-06:00

It appears that science is withering at LANL.

I am doing science in Los Alamos county - green energy and high end computing - but not with LANL.

One topic that seemed to be intriguing at LANL was metamaterials, but with the creation of gold ring metamaterials elsewhere (materials that offer partial invisibility in the visible part of the spectrum), it is not clear that LANL's good scientists can compete effectively.

Jobs in other places

2007-06-21T09:04:00.001-06:00

Current information about employers looking for job applicants is on workingatlanl

Content on big questions

2007-06-20T12:59:00.000-06:00

There are big questions about the future of Los Alamos that need to be addressed soon, actually more than a year ago.

Since Pinky and the Brain will not moderate their blog and since there are some annoying commenters whose main insight is "You suck.", I intend to post anything substantial that might help workers at LANL, LLNL, etc. here and not on Los Alamos: The Rest of the Story.

I will post input or articles from readers when these things move the discussion along.

Nuclear Borderlands

2007-06-20T06:29:00.000-06:00

I mentioned Hugh Gusterson's "People of the Bomb," an anthropological study of Livermore.
Here is another fascinating book.

The Nuclear Borderlands:
The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico

By Joseph Masco

This book concerns not only historical details of the Manhattan project but also nuclear weapons not as products but as myth, as phantasmagoria, that interact with us on primal levels.

Masco has a fascinating section on the similarities between the social structure of LANL and the social structure of local pueblo cultures. In both cultures, there are high priests who have knowledge that they can never talk about to more than a few people. People outside the circle of high priests are supposed to submit to the demands of this secret knowledge even though they only know of the existence of the secret knowledge when they violate one of its unstated tenets.

At the Lab, the interactions with this secret knowledge are known as going on 'rock hunts.' The hunter brings back 'rocks' (certain sought items) only to be told that the current retrieved rock is the wrong one and that the hunter should keep looking. The hunt continues under rules that the hunter is not allowed to know.

Original post September 2006

New features

2007-06-19T13:13:00.000-06:00

I have three blogs at the moment. There are links to the other two on the left of this blog.

The active new blog is Working at LANL, which deals with planning for the future including job hunting, in a time of uncertainty.

Working at LANL is a convenient name. The blog is relevant to working at most DOE labs in this time of contract renegotiation.

Original post in October 2006

Beyond LANL

2007-06-19T13:09:00.000-06:00

Since the blog workingatlanl is really discussing things beyond LANL, this blog will also extend to science in general, especially at national labs, and no longer concern itself just with Los Alamos.

the workings of memory

2007-05-04T10:06:00.000-06:00

For anyone who got to here and wonders what I may or may not know about the molecular workings of memory as evidenced, molecule by molecule, in small (less than 10,000 neurons, less than 100,000 synapses) collections of cells, ask the questions that you would like answered.

Update

2007-05-02T17:21:00.000-06:00

There is some really good science that is still being done here, in bits and pieces. The most recent are two articles on nanotubes in either Science or Nature.

A couple of satellites were successfully built and launched.

Part of the SNAP (Supernova Acceleration Project) is being done here.

I know about this project because my daughter was characterizing IR sensitive CCDs for it, found that the theory of electron motion in CCDs was not quite right, and just presented this work at the Advanced Instrumentation Seminar at SLAC. (The proud dad would be happy to answer questions about this work. ;-) )

As for me, the work on building devices that function on the principals that we all use in learning things is progressing well. I now think that I understand the molecular function of sleep.

I am also talking with various angels and others about making the company go faster.

For details about any of this, just ask.

An hypothesis

2006-11-04T08:13:00.000-07:00

I propose that the time of LANL as a place with many top notch research breakthroughs in a number of scientific fields is over. I propose that there will be isolated advances but that places like Lawrence Berkeley Lab and Oak Ridge National Lab will be the place of scientific breakthroughs.

Can anyone prove me wrong?

Thanks

On beyond neural nets

2006-10-16T08:22:00.000-06:00

Does anyone have software or knowledge that they could share about advanced neural nets? I would like to build some quickly but the software that I can find to help the building process is not flexible enough.
Thanks.

New Science

2006-10-16T08:20:00.000-06:00

I have a request for solid science, done in Northern New Mexico, that could lead to commercial income nationally or could lead to improved energy usage in New Mexico. Anyone know of such technology?

Helping the laid off

2006-10-07T14:00:00.000-06:00

We are providing financial teaching and job hunting to the laid off. We can provide these same services to Livermore folk.

Science?

2006-09-29T14:10:00.000-06:00

I am worried that ground breaking science will no longer be at LANL.

I would appreciate thoughts about what ground breaking science should be here in the future and why that science should be here as opposed to somewhere else.

Thanks

Layoffs and other parts of $200,000,000

2006-09-27T17:44:00.000-06:00

My guess is that the 350 layoffs constitute not more than $35,000,000 of the projected $200,000,000 shortfall.

For those who have been laid off, I have a number of resources, financial and job hunting, to help them.

For the other $165,000,000, we can discuss it if anyone wants to.

200 million

2006-09-26T18:36:00.000-06:00

It is becoming clearer and clearer how LANS will save $200,000,000 in their budget.

Some of this savings appears to be beneficial for the people living in Northern New Mexico; some does not.

For the part that is not apparently beneficial for current local residents, there seem to be ways to minimize the damage.

Does anyone want to discuss this?

An interesting report

2006-09-22T14:56:00.000-06:00

Report of the Nuclear Weapons Infrastructure Task Force

Recommendations for the Nuclear Weapons Complex of the Future

The report is interesting because it appears to lay out the future of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Training courses

2006-09-19T18:24:00.000-06:00

Here are a few courses that I can offer and that may be of local interest.

1. Stress reduction - Proven methods of lowering the personal stress in town.

2. Team building - Proven methods to build and maintain multidisciplinary productive teams.

3. Financial teaching - Modern, tested ways for a person or family to improve their financial stability and future. Just teaching, no sales of stocks, bonds, etc. Completely private and confidential.

4. Ubiquitous sensing - various aspects of taking data from many classes of sensors and reducing it to supportable decisions. Areas include biotechnology, stockpile stewardship, and remote sensing.

5. Learning and memory - various devices based on a well developed theory of the workings of memory in humans.

6. Biologically based materials - Biology brings us unique materials and unique ability to control the performance of materials. Biologically based materials show promise in some new areas of materials development.

7. A Riemannian manifold approach to understanding biology - In many areas of modern research, 'distance' is a more complex idea than was previously thought. These manifolds are a natural way to understand and use some of these necessarily complex distance measures.

8. Unbiased exegesis of certain Biblical books.

Any interest in these or related lower level courses.

Pit production

2006-09-18T15:22:00.000-06:00

If Los Alamos became 80% funded through the production of pits, would you still want to live or work here?
If you are a scientist or the spouse of a scientist what would be the attraction of coming to Los Alamos?
For thoughts on economic consequences of large scale pit production, go to http://trinity-site-revitalization.blogspot.com/

For exemplars, read the story of Rocky Flats, Savannah River, and Hanford. The story of Alton, NY,a superfund site near Buffalo, is also instructive.

Topics evaporated

2006-09-13T23:54:00.000-06:00

The following topics and their comments used to be posted here. You can now get them by emailing me that you want them back.

1. The spouse problem. - Where would a spouse work in Northern New Mexico so that they could use their talents? Why would this be better than staying on a coast?

2. Economic development and retirements - If the town becomes a retirement community is this good economic development?

3. The effect of the need for clearances - Clearances and the delay in getting them severely alters the dynamics of the workforce.

4. Model organizations - What are some model organizations that Los Alamos could use as examples of how to improve?

5. Management - What are tried and true examples of good management practices for a weapons lab? How can Los Alamos evolve toward these practices?

6. Sensitivity analysis - In business, sensitivity analysis is often done. Essentially, sensitivity analysis is an attempt to predict what might happen to an organization if someone is changed by a certain amount. For a dramatic example, if all the weapons designers were let go tomorrow, it would take many years to train new ones and there would be no one to train them. Thus the organization would be in trouble.

8. Trimming the fat - To trim the fat and not the muscle or the bone, you have to have a good way to identify which is which? Especially, given the need for clearances and extensive training in many Lab jobs, what might be good ways to identify bone, muscle, and fat. A difficulty is in identifying apparent fat that is really a muscle that is not currently being used but that will be used in the next few years and therefore should not be cut.

9. Industrial psychology - There is a psychology of organizations, see "Built to Last." Some of this psychology makes the organization healthy; some does not. What is the psychology of LANL, of LANS, and of Bechtel?

11. Serving at an outpost for life - If a person's internal view is that they are entitled to serve at LANL for life, even after retirement, then they will treat LANL and their relationship with LANL differently than they would if they worked at an organization that has the expected high turnover of modern American industry.

12. Lab management trends - There are styles of management of large research driven organizations. Which of these styles might apply here?

13. Introverts and Extroverts - At the Lab, there is a much higher proportion of introverts than occur in the population or at most organizations. Some Lab dynamics seem to be a direct result of this high proportion of introverts.

14. Foreign nationals - If all foreign nationals are excluded from the Lab, many deadlines that need to be met would not be met.

15. Ownership of the Lab - Who actually owns the Lab in the sense that this owner can get the dynamics of the Lab to change. Possibilities include LANS, DOE, NNSA, long time employees, Domenici, and no one.

16. Insightful references

17. Domestic abuse - this one was not really posted here but is a topic that keeps coming up in discussions around town. Comment if you want to.

Change

2006-09-13T08:47:00.000-06:00

Apparently, the world of Los Alamos National Laboratory is in the process of changing dramatically. The change to new operating rules seems certain. Many long time employees seem to be still operating under the 50 year old unchanging rules but trying to work harder. This approach of working harder but not working under the new rules seems to be fraught with peril, especially if DOE is the one changing the rules and the person has never dealt with any funding agency except DOE.

Does anyone have well thought out predictions about what Los Alamos will look like 5 years from now, especially for those who are 45 and older and who have never worked anywhere else?

Thanks,

Changing the content of posts

2006-09-11T17:14:00.000-06:00

I realize that I may be violating some unpublished blog rules, but I have started to change posts that seem to need changing. So, you may want to reread a post to see if it is revised.

When I change a post or just think that it has gotten too far down the cue, I usually change its posting date.

Trinity Site Revitalization blog

2006-09-09T10:34:00.000-06:00

By request, I have created a Trinity Site Revitalization blog.

Here is its URL.

http://trinity-site-revitalization.blogspot.com/

I have copied posts about Trinity Site from here to the new blog and will post new information about Trinity Site only on the Trinity Site Blog. As I double check them, I will remove the Trinity Site posts from here.

Let me know if this works for you.

Costs

2006-09-09T08:37:00.000-06:00

Companies drive down the cost of production relentlessly. One company engaged the employees in this endeavor by a simple approach. If an employee made a cost saving suggestion that the company adopted, then, for a few years, the employee received a cash bonus of 10 cents for every dollar that the company saved. Some employees became millionaires. One person became a millionaire by suggesting that the company read its customers meters every other month instead of every month thus decreasing the need for so many meter readers.

If you look around at LANL, what are some cost saving measures and how much cost might they save over a year?

Thanks

Post Modernism, "Built to Last," and "People of the Bomb"

2006-09-08T16:47:00.000-06:00

Post modernism talks about how people create different stories about the events in their lives and how they then simplify the decisions in their lives by living as if their story is true. One of the disconnects between groups of people then comes not from disagreements on the facts but from disagreements about the 'true' story that describes the facts. Difficulties in understanding the meaning of an action arise when the group interpreting a set of actions is using a different story about the world than the stories that were used by the originators of the action or by other current groups who are looking at the action.

Gusterson comments on this effect in depth in his book "People of the Bomb." A similar view, but this time about companies, is presented in "Built to Last."

The point, for this blog, is that people stay at an organization because they either initially believe the dominant story of the organization or because they come to believe the story of the organization. They internalize the story strongly, especially if there are no other stories being told locally.

A difficulty comes, not just here but in many organizations, when the story believed within the organization is no longer believed outside the organization, especially by funders of the organization. The organization tends to fight for the truth of their story about the world believing that their story is 'the one and only truth.' This defense of story can be thought of as a circle the wagons approach.

If their story is not the truth, is only a fraction of the truth, or is not thought to be the truth by funders of the organization; then the organization dies. This has happened thousands of times - think asbestos, computer cards, whiskey as an anesthetic in surgery, vacuum tubes, or fighting wars by marching shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the road in red coats.

Could some of the current strain at LANL be caused not by cowboys, buttheads, arrogance, childish behavior, or other derogatory terms but by an unarticulated defense of a story about the world that is not believed outside of Los Alamos county and parts of DOE?

LANS will bring a new story to LANL. Any comments on how much stress this new story will create in the current workforce.

Original post June 2006

Empowering women

2006-09-01T16:46:00.000-06:00

A major long term topic for me is empowering women, especially women with technical backgrounds.

If someone wants, we can explore this topic in detail.

TCP1 and TCP2

2006-08-29T22:25:00.000-06:00

Any one want to comment on the choice that you made for the pension plan and whether, in retrospect, your choice was a best choice.

Recruitment - retirement versus demand

2006-08-29T10:44:00.000-06:00

For LANL to survive and to receive a stable yearly income there have to be people here to do the work. The work has to be attractive to the people who might come.

Two facts seem relevant to recruitment.

1. There are likely to be 1000 retirements per year from the Lab for each of the next three years no matter who wins the contract.

2. There are only 1100 newly minted physicists in the country each year of whom only 50 would be expected to be interested in things that the Lab does. If you look at the subfields of these 50, there expected pool of likely hirees drops to 12 with only 2 in plasma physics and 0.5 in fluids. The number of computer scientists not in biocomputing is plummeting as well. (I do not know the numbers for metallurgists, chemists, etc.)

Where are the people coming from to keep the place moving?

Why would they choose to work in isolated Los Alamos in preference to universities, companies or other less isolated government laboratories.?

Why would they choose to start careers in fields that are not viewed as 'hot' and in which the funding is iffy?

Ubiquituous sensing

2006-08-29T10:37:00.000-06:00

As sensors get smaller, more sensitive, cheaper,and more numerous, there is a growing demand for a way to integrate sensor information accurately across many sensing modalities and come to defensible conclusions.

The applications cover most fields of science and engineering. Does anyone have interest in discussing sensors or their integration

Viable science

2006-08-29T10:36:00.000-06:00

It seems that the scientific projects in physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, etc. that would attract the most talented people from around the world to LANL are not in areas where the lab has traditionally been strong. See, for instance, Steve Chu's major proposed project for Lawrence Berkeley Lab on harnessing the biochemistry of termite guts to solve the energy crisis.

The most referenced papers in Science no longer often come from areas of the Lab's traditional strength.

How might the Lab change so that it can have competitive projects in these new areas to attract the next generation of scientists while it continues to support the current version of its more traditional missions?

The easiest path appears to be to continue on traditional funding avenues even though these projects do not attract the cream of the new crop of scientists. Or to become, like Brigadoon, invisible by making more and more projects classified.

Thanks to Bill Godwin's post on LANL: The Real Story, I annotated this post and moved it to the top of the list. If anyone is interested, I have a number of tentative projects that would be cutting edge for the Lab and that would cross many groups. These projects are hard and can only be done at a national lab. Let me know if you would like more information about them.

Eric

Effective job hunting for older scientists

2006-08-28T19:04:00.000-06:00

It seems that hundreds of experienced scientists of various backgrounds will soon not be working at the Lab.

Many of these scientists have worked hard on classified projects for many years.

There are few existing jobs that require older scientists who can't talk about what they have done for years.

One way to circumvent this difficulty might be to work with these scientists so that they can present their marketable skills in a useful way to potential employers.

Then the scientists could be employed in a new field for which they have skills.

I have been helping scientists write effective resumes and talk with credible employers.

Does any have suggestions about how to do this better or how to reach the people who need this service?

Should Germantown prosper from the degradation of LANL

2006-08-27T09:33:00.000-06:00

Here is a modified post that seems important as the level of worry rises at LANL. The original post occurred in June, 2005.

What is the personal responsibility of people in DOE headquarters toward the people working here? If LANL degrades, should parts of DOE headquarters degrade with it or should people at headquarters get promoted for the loss of science or programmatic capabilities at LANL?

Should LANS or DOE prosper at the expense of the scientific and programmatic missions of the Lab? If LANS or DOE can prosper by weakening the national security missions of the Lab, what force, anywhere, might redirect the outcome?

Thoughts?

RIF committee

2006-08-25T16:35:00.000-06:00

I have been told that there is a committee to decide who gets RIFed from LANL in the near future. Anyone have information about this that they can share?

In the queue

2006-08-23T09:09:00.000-06:00

Here are some topics that seem likely to show up here when I have time.

1. Recruitment and retention at LANL
2. A viable scientific mission for the Lab.
3. Nanoscale biological/non biological structures
4. Uses for molecules labeled with stable isotopes
5. Stable, non Lab economic development
6. Interactions with organizations across the country
7. Effective job hunting for older scientists

Possibly, there will be other topics that are currently in the very sensitive stage and should not yet be discussed publically.

Cheers

Modeling and simulation

2006-08-23T08:35:00.000-06:00

At LANL and many other places, there are computer models and simulations of increasing complexity.

These models have intrinsic pitfalls. They may have inaccurate computer code; they may not have included the mathematical theory correctly; or the range over which the theory is accurate may be small (a theory can't predict new physics that is found by experiment).

What is an optimal method for minimizing these pitfalls, especially for finding subtle versions of these pitfalls in existing complex codes?

Alternative energy production

2006-08-23T08:31:00.000-06:00

I have been having a number of discussions about the economics of alternative energy production.

The conclusion so far is that sources of energy that are not coal, nuclear, or oil based sound good politically but are unlikely to be a significant source of energy any time soon.

They will not be a significant source of energy because they cost too much per kilowatt hour and produce too few kilowatt hours.

Thoughts?

Ricci flows

2006-08-23T08:24:00.001-06:00

Perelman, a Russian mathematician, has just won the Fields prize in mathematics for proving the Poincare conjecture. The conjecture has to do with the deformability of space time, actually Riemannian manifolds.

Ricci flow has to do with the rate of the deformation, tears during the deformation, and the forces on the deformation. Ricci flow is useful in general relativity.

The mathematics underlying the Poincare conjecture and Ricci flows is useful in certain parts of physics. I am pursuing the idea that Ricci flow may be key to creating a better mathematics of parts of biology.

Please correct any errors in the statements above and contact me if you would like to extend this discussion, either in physics or in biology.

Investing 401K or other money

2006-08-22T17:34:00.000-06:00

A number of people have asked about where there 401K money should go and about various Fidelity funds.

I am not a financial adviser so I will not make any particular recommendations on this blog. I do, however, have a lot of information that I am willing to share offline. This information should be of great value to those managing their 401Ks.

So, contact me or comment.

Nanomaterials

2006-08-15T21:07:00.000-06:00

It is becoming possible to make interesting materials in bulk. These materials are working toward the subtly of biological materials.

For instance, semiperiodic materials whose unit cells have particular controlled complex refractive indices seem likely to be the harbingers of a whole new generation of lenses.

Is anyone interesting in having a discussion of the design of such materials?

Another Newman article from the Monitor

2006-08-09T07:09:00.000-06:00

Revised Trinity plan coming

Darryl Newman, lareporter@lamonitor.com

Boyer Company representatives have cited various financial resources that it will tap into in moving forward with plans for constructing the Trinity Site mixed-use development.

The Boyer Co. will leverage a combination of its own equity with loans on the balance of the property, said Boyer Partner David Nielson.

"We have done this with various commercial lenders," Nielson said today by phone from company offices in Salt Lake City. "We won't have one particular lender we'll be working with until further down the road.

After that, we can go out to lenders and see who will give us the best interest rates, among other aspects."

Financially, the project is estimated to generate $2,587,534 in gross receipt taxes, as well as $1,199,090 in incremental property tax, according to Boyer's request for proposal to the county. In addition, land parcels A-8 and A-11 purchased from the school district will generate $5,286,145 in revenue to the school district.

Boyer and Los Alamos County will develop three separate lease agreements as part of an overall agreement, said Assistant County Administrator Anthony Mortillaro. There will be a lease agreement on the actual property to be leased, a sale agreement on land sales and a development agreement that covers the total area to be sold.

"We will be negotiating and there is still a lot of work to be done on it," Mortillaro said. "There will be a negotiating of the draft agreements that will eventually go through a modification process. We're giving ourselves plenty of time to do all of this."

The county will work with Boyer exclusively in developing lease agreements, Mortillaro said. Boyer will develop the Trinity Site on land that it will lease from the county.

Boyer will then lease retail and office space pads to individual retailers. Boyer also may construct its own buildings and lease the facility to retailers, Mortillaro said.

"The buildings that are leased will reflect the ground lease and the building lease to the retailer under just one lease rate," Mortillaro said. "The ground lease from the county will be solely to Boyer, who will reflect their lease rate to their tenants."

Nielson said Boyer has yet to finalize any plans with a retail giant to anchor the Trinity Place development. Candidates so far include Wal-Mart, Target and Smith's Marketplace.

A master site plan proposed by Boyer that was published in Sunday's Monitor will be obsolete by Wednesday, Nielson said.

"The site configuration has changed again and will change again later, as we look and see what the costs will be," Nielson said. "The new plan will look more like the first conceptual drawings."

Mortillaro said he is hopeful that the modified plan will more closely resemble what the county has envisioned for economic development on the site.

Boyer representatives, including Nielson, will be in Los Alamos on Saturday and will be available to answer questions from the public regarding the project. The representatives will present from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Municipal Building.

The Trinity Place development is an economic venture in place between Boyer Company and the Los Alamos County and the Los Alamos Public School District.

The site will be comprised of 155,500 square feet of retail, 34,700 square feet of commercial space and 53,150 square feet of mixed-use office, restaurant and entertainment space. Copies of the Trinity Place proposal are available for public review at the Kan Du Center, located in the Municipal Building and also are available at the Mesa Public Library.

Comments on Trinity Site

2006-07-31T10:44:00.000-06:00

Trinity site is a rare opportunity for Los Alamos to improve its retail atmosphere. Please comment well and often on the postings for Trinity Site.

Thanks,

Eric