News By Location

Winning the war on terrorism and securing the homeland will require innovative science and technology solutions. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is in an excellent position to develop science and technology for strengthening America's ability to defend itself against terrorism.

A 70 percent reduction in West Coast mountain snow cover will lead to increased fall and winter flooding, severe spring and summer drought that will play havoc with the West's agriculture, fisheries and hydropower industry. "And this is a best case scenario," says the forecast's chief modeler, L. Ruby Leung, a staff scientist at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.

Following the National Academy of Sciences criticism of the Bush administration's plans for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles last week, taxpayers are left wondering how realistic is the vision for a hydrogen economy, what kinds of approaches are scientists and engineers taking and just what are the technical hurdles involved. While the goals outlined and funded by the Department of Energy are aggressive, they're not unrealistically so, say researchers at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Researchers have identified an astounding 4,000 distinctive proteins in human blood plasma, a critical step toward cataloguing biological markers for early diagnosis cancer and other diseases. "This is 10 times the number of proteins identified" and previously reported, said Richard D. Smith, a senior scientist and Battelle Fellow at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The proteomics advance was announced Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.

The United States will have to invest $450 billion in conventional electric infrastructure just to meet expected growth in demand in the next 20 years, say researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This doesn't address grid instabilities and inefficiencies, security vulnerabilities and costly mortgages on large assets sized to meet just a few hundred hours of peak usage. The answer, asserts PNNL, is a complete transformation of the electricity system through use of information technology.

Personal protective suits may protect soldiers from chemical and biological weapons, yet extreme heat inside that gear poses a different but equal threat. Without portable cooling technology to ward off heat exhaustion and heat stroke, suits meant to save lives can incapacitate soldiers in just minutes.

Rats subjected to extreme electromagnetic fields produce dangerous levels of the toxic gas ozone, according to a new study out of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. It is the first experiment to conclusively link an electromagnetic field with a health-adverse chemical effect in the presence of an animal, said Steven Goheen, a scientist at the Department of Energy lab and lead author of a paper published in the current issue of the journal Bioelectromagnetics.

Three environmental technologies developed by researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have earned a Technology Merit Award for the laboratory in the annual Business Achievement Awards competition sponsored by the Environmental Business Journal.

The Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and NASA's Glenn Research Center have agreed to collaborate in solving one of the toughest technical challenges to the development of advanced solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). The two research organizations have signed a Space Act Agreement to team in the development of sealing technologies for the stacks of solid oxide fuel cells.

Epidermal growth factor and its receptor system, or EGFR, is well-trodden territory in molecular biology. But systems biologists are taking a new look at this critical community of proteins, which is responsible for everything from the development of insect eyes and the mouse brain to human heart and skin.