China overtakes United States on contribution to research in Nature Index

China overtakes United States on contribution to research in Nature Index
Data on affiliations suggest that authors from China made the largest contribution to high-quality natural-science research in 2022.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01705-7

New Bechtel office in Knoxville,TN

 Bechtel opens new Tennessee office

The firm’s Engineering Execution Center will support its work on complex, mission-based projects.


https://www.constructiondive.com/news/bechtel-knoxville-tennessee-new-office/693666/

19 most recent scientific breakthroughs

 Scientists in many fields have been getting little attention over the last two years or so...

https://theweek.com/health-and-science/1019386/recent-scientific-breakthroughs

Will AI cause a reduction in the workforce in the NNSA labs?

 

According to a new poll, fear of becoming obsolete (FOBO) among the younger workforce participants is a real issue as AI is predicted to replace large portions of the workforce. The question is, how much of the NNSA workforce can be replaced by AI or automation? If one could automate pit production, that could reduce the number of workers, but this will likely happen soon.

On the other hand, many Admin, HR, and bureaucratic jobs seem like good candidates to be replaced by AI, which could be 10-30% of the workforce. Of course, a more cynical is that these jobs are already early versions of Universal Basic Income, so simply replacing them with AI will not help because then you would have to give these people money once they are out of a job. Of course, AI could replace scientists or at least replace what we do at the labs. Highly automated simulations and analysis could be done better than we have with humans doing it.

Granholm impeachment

 Rep. Claudia Tenney pushes Congress to hold Energy Secretary ‘accountable’ with impeachment injury: ‘Colossal ego’

https://nypost.com/2023/09/14/rep-claudia-tenney-pushes-for-impeachment-inquiry-energy-secretary-granholm/amp/

LLNS contract expiration

 The “Prime Contract” DE-AC52-07NA27344 with LLNS, began on October 1, 2007, and is scheduled to end on September 30, 2026 (~3 years from now).

Who are the material contenders to manage LLNL when LLNS is out? What actions have been taken thus far to make the transition to the next federal contractor to manage LLNL, occur with minimum delay due to failure to prepare?

Can the labs rise to the challenges?

 Lots of relevant world news for the labs. China, Russia and climate change. Can the labs rise to the challenges?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/xi-jinping-is-done-with-the-established-world-order/ar-AA1gtcNM

Xi Jinping Is Done With the Established World Order. China is sending a clear messsge, that China is done with the established world order.

Musk is out of control and not helping with the world in defeating Russia

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/08/elon-musk-committed-evil-starlink-order-ukraine

We need to start considering a government take over against Musk at this point. It is becoming clear that he and his minions are a threat to freedom.

This is on top of the fact that 2023 has been the worse year in worlds weather

as climate change is now ramping up.

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/30/1196865225/whats-the-connection-between-climate-change-and-hurricanes

Bill Richardson died.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12473877/new-mexico-governor-ambassador-bill-richardson-brittney-griner.html

Ok maybe this is not as big as news as Jimmy Buffet but Bill Richardson was rather the controversial character in terms of NNSA and LANL.

Richardson had a troubled tenure as energy secretary because of a scandal over missing computer equipment with nuclear weapons secrets at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the government´s investigation and prosecution of former nuclear weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee.

Richardson approved Lee´s firing at Los Alamos in 1999. Lee spent nine months in solitary confinement, charged with 59 counts of mishandling sensitive information. Lee later pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling computer files and was released with the apology of a federal judge.

Rumor had it that Richardson leaked information on the WHL case to try to save himself. This partially jeopardized the case. The other rumors was that he was going to be Al Gores running mate but because of the LANL incident was out. He may have been able to swing the hispanic vote a bit in Florida.

2023 Nobel Prize

 The 2023 Nobel prize season is coming up. Is this the year NIF gets it?

Pulsed power fusion

 Is it time to put pulsed power fusion to bed? Given the success of NIF and the inability of the Z machine to get anywhere near that level of performance, should the NNSA officially announce that fusion will no longer be pursued on pulsed power machines? I understand there is great difficulty in scaling to a larger Z machine due to power flow losses. The future designs presented by Sandia are also highly impractical, relying on hundreds of thousands of capacitors. I think it’s over for pulsed power fusion efforts

Will LLNS layoff "permanent" employees ?

 Will LLNS again lay off so called “Career Indefinite” employees in the next major LLNS lay off event, now that they have a 2013 NNSA approved recipe to keep Supplemental Labor over career FTEs (breach of contract)? You want to work here?