Editor's Screen
Whether it's food processing or salmon recovery efforts, chemical monitoring or detecting biological pathogens, the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has been making sense of it all with sensors. We dedicate a special section of this issue of Breakthroughs to Pacific Northwest's innovative research and technologies in the area of sensor systems, including a sensor fish that collects data as it passes through turbines at hydroelectric dams.
Pacific Northwest also is incorporating its expertise in sensors into detection tools that might help protect and defend against chemical and biological weapons. We talked with Barbara Seiders, who leads Pacific Northwest's Chemical and Biological Defense Sciences Product Line to learn more about this threat and how it's being addressed.
The stories in this edition—featuring technology solutions like digital dog tags that store medical history and scientific research projects including studies of how carbon from the atmosphere could be captured and stored in the soil—are examples of the cutting-edge solutions Pacific Northwest is developing to meet today's challenges.
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- To track down details about Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's radio frequency tags, described in "RF tags on the right track for tracking," see http://www.pnl.gov/nsd/commercial/rftags/index.html
- Go to http://pnl113.pnl.gov/windtunn.nsf (URL no longer active) to breeze through more information about Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Aerosol Research Wind Tunnel Facility, featured in "Wind tunnel mimics Mother Nature."
- For descriptions of the 54 R&D 100 Awards received by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researchers since 1969, including this year's winners seen in "Three top technologies have roots at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory" check out http://www.pnl.gov/main/welcome/awards/rd100/
- Visit http://www.pnl.gov/dcbpweb/index.htm to read about Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's work in the area of detection and characterization of biological pathogens, such as the work Barbara Seiders describes in "Getting a grip on the grim and gruesome."
- If the "Sensor Savvy" section leaves you wanting to know more about Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's sensor, measurement and electronic technologies, check out http://www.technet.pnl.gov/sensors/
The photos of Bonneville Dam and the salmon smolts included on the cover and the turbines in "Sensor Savvy" courtesy of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.