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Scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will train U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspectors to identify and halt smuggling of weapons of mass destruction during a special training course this week in Richland. The course marks the start of a second year for the training program, which is being conducted by PNNL with the newly created Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Customs and Border Protection.

The Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is now home to the United States' fastest operational unclassified supercomputer – an 11.8 teraflops HP Integrity system. Based on peak performance, the PNNL machine is the fifth fastest system in the world and is the fastest unclassified computer operating in the U.S. The PNNL system is the world's fastest supercomputer based on the Linux operating system and is the largest machine ever built using Intel's 64-bit architecture.

PNNL is a leader in power grid reliability, from impacts of aging infrastructure, deregulation and vulnerabilities to terrorism to envisioning a power grid of the future. PNNL experts are supporting DOE and other industry stakeholders to provide insight to the factors that play a role in large-scale outages such as those that occurred on the East Coast on Aug. 14, and how susceptibility to such events can be minimized with new technology and tighter cooperation.

Research has found that thousands of miles of essential juvenile salmon habitat are blocked by tens of thousands of culverts that lay beneath Pacific Northwest roadways. Many of these culverts - that for years have successfully channeled water under roadbeds - are acting as barriers to young salmon preventing them the upstream passage required for growth and development.

Three Pacific Northwest National Laboratory inventions have made the 2003 list of the world's 100 most important scientific and technical innovations, according to an annual competition by R&D Magazine. This brings the PNNL R&D 100 Awards total to 62 since the contest's inception in 1969, 55 of them since 1988.

A recent study by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine, has provided a new understanding of sea salt's role in atmospheric chemistry. This study--focusing on sulfur dioxide and its conversion to sulfuric acid in air--will allow scientists to more accurately predict and capture information in models related to regional or global warming. Results of the study are reported in the July 3, 2003, issue of Science Express.

A new method of extracting and analyzing fluid from a woman's breast may provide a more accurate, less expensive and noninvasive way to determine a patient's risk for breast cancer or to diagnose the disease in its early stages.

A new scientific study has revealed that tiny sea salt particles drifting into the atmosphere participate in a chemical reaction that may have impacts on climate and acid rain. The research, published in the July 3 online issue of Science Express, provides a new understanding of sea salt's role in atmospheric chemistry that will allow scientists to better predict and capture that information in models used to predict climate change.

Billions of tons of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel-fired power plants are pumped into the air each day, contributing to global warming. Scientists at PNNL's Marine Sciences Laboratory in Sequim, Wash., are looking at marine algae as a solution to global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel-fired power plants.

Researchers, with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, have developed a potentially high-energy microscale power system that can be used as an alternative to conventional batteries for microelectronic devices crucial to America's military troops.