By Ryan Lei, C2ST Intern, Neuqua Valley High School
How does a productive, powerful, and zero-emission source of energy sound? Introducing: Nuclear power plants!
In order to understand the awesome power behind these structures, it’s important to understand the force that lets these power plants create energy: nuclear fission. Fission occurs when a nucleus (the center) of an uranium atom splits into two, which produces heat. When this splitting process occurs, each half is then able to split again. This causes a chain reaction responsible for the explosive power of a modern day nuclear weapon. However, when this chain reaction process is executed in a controlled environment, it produces massive amounts of energy that is not only extremely effective, but more importantly, very sustainable and environmentally-friendly.
On July 23rd, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spread of the monkeypox virus to be a global health emergency. The media is erupting with stories and information regarding the disease, but how dangerous is monkeypox really?
Cats and catnip have a strange, age-old relationship. Catnip (Nepeta cataria) is a plant from the mint family and roughly two-thirds of catsٰٰٰ¹ are intensely attracted to this seemingly innocuous plant. Just the smell of it makes them go paw-sitively wild! They start rubbing against everything, rolling and flipping around, and even zooming around the house before it wears off within a half-hour. On the other hand, ingesting catnip seems to have the opposite effect and mellows out cats. So what gives? What kind of power does chemistry have on our feline friends?
In April 2022, scientists from all over the world put themselves at risk of being arrested. While the issue of climate change and climate change regulation has been a heated topic for years, a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sounded the alarm for many researchers as it warns we only have until 2025 to make significant changes to our consumption behaviors. After the report was published, an international community of scientists went to the streets to protest the lack of action by local governments and to draw attention to the dire results outlined in the new report. Peter Kalmus, of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was one such scientist. “It’s now the eleventh hour and I feel terrified for my kids and terrified for humanity,” he said.
Argonne National Laboratory is home to several supercomputers with impressive computational power. These computers have aided research efforts in fields such as energy, climate, health, cosmology, computing, and more. The next level of the evolution in supercomputers will continue to help scientists address national problems in science and technology. Processing data faster and more efficiently will lead to faster solutions and pivotal discoveries to improve our daily lives. Therefore, with supercomputing on the rise, there is a great need for continued performance capability and efficiency. One of these scientists that works toward this goal is Dr. Sam Foreman.
