Researchers at DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory recently completed a side-by-side vehicle test in Phoenix, Ariz., designed to determine the benefits of using a new alternative window glazing versus a standard glazing. Test results indicate the new solar reflective glass resulted in reduced passenger compartment temperatures and heat gain. Lower interior temperatures could allow automobile manufacturers to reduce the size of air conditioners in vehicles or let passengers use their air conditioners for a shorter time, resulting in improved fuel economy and reduced tailpipe emissions.

[Sarah Holmes Barba, 303/275-3023,
sarah_barba@nrel.gov]

 

Cutting out food waste

 

Flame measurement optimizes combustor operation

 

Ship-shape tech for oil-water separation

A licensee of DOE's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory is finding product success with commercial customers as well as other laboratories for R&D; purposes. Based in Carson City, Nev., CINC's centrifuge technology is helping in an experimental effort to re-commission old oil tankers as floating oil-processing ships in Brazil. The oil from ocean reserves contains entrained water, which the compact CINC centrifuge separates with a simple onboard filter, allowing the separated water to be returned to the ocean. In the nation's federal laboratories like Brookhaven, Argonne and Oak Ridge, the centrifuge has found environmental applications ranging from biochemical research to nuclear waste extraction.

[Steve Zollinger, 208/526-9590,
gaz@inel.gov]

 

Stabilizing cubes to save time and millions

Polycube stabilization work at Hanford

An expedient, cost-saving approach to stabilizing 1,600 "polycubes" of degrading plutonium at DOE's Hanford Site is due to scientific collaboration between researchers at DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Fluor Hanford workers. The two-inch cubes of plutonium were fabricated in polystyrene in the 1960s to determine safe storage parameters for large volumes of plutonium wastes. When the polycubes began deteriorating, causing storage challenges and potential environmental risks, PNNL collaborated with Fluor Hanford on the solution. Research showed the material could be stabilized using existing muffle furnaces, thereby avoiding a costly middle step, condensing the work schedule by years, and saving up to $5 million. Work begins in 2001.

[Mary Ace, 509/372-4277,
mary.ace@pnl.gov]

 

Super-efficient water heater boasts quick payback

Water heating consumes about 17 percent of the energy for a typical household. The Building Technology Center at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is assisting in developing a heat pump water heater as a replacement for a conventional water heater. It can provide a two-year payback because of its greater efficiency. The heat pump water heater has an energy factor of 2.47 as compared with 0.95 for the most efficient conventional electric units. If installed where there is a floor drain, it will provide space cooling and dehumidification as well as hot water. If broadly adopted, use of this water heater could save almost 1 percent of the country's energy consumption.

[Ron Walli, 865/576-0226,
wallira@ornl.gov]

For Eva Nogales, it's been
a banner millennium

Eva Nogales

So far, this has been a banner millennium for Eva Nogales, a biophysicist with DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). In May, she was one of the 48 winners of a national competition to be appointed as an investigator for the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). In October, she won the Burton Medal, an annual award presented by the Microscopy Society of America to honor distinguished contributions to the field of microscopy and microanalysis by a scientist under the age of 40.

In between these two events, on August 18, she gave birth to her first child, a son she and her husband, Howard Padmore, a scientist at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source, named Carlos Daniel Padmore.

Nogales' rapid rise to scientific prominence sprang from the major role she played in producing the first three-dimensional, atomic-scale model of tubulin, a highly flexible protein that enables a living cell to carry out such vital activities as mitosis (division) and the regulation of materials passing into the cell. The model created by Nogales and her colleagues revealed valuable new information about tubulin's role in potential cancer treatments.

Now with a lab of her own, Nogales most recently made headlines for her part in using a unique combination of electron microscopy and single-particle image analysis to produce the first 3-D images of the protein complex that initiates DNA transcription. Born in Madrid, Spain, Evangelina Nogales de la Morena is a true international scholar, having earned her undergraduate degree in physics from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, and her Ph.D. from the University of Keele in England. She joined Berkeley Lab in 1993 as a post-doctoral fellow and within five years went on to become a staff scientist with the Life Sciences Division, as well as an assistant professor with the Molecular and Cell Biology Department of the University of California at Berkeley.

Submitted by DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory