Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Bernard Strehler, 76, retired USC molecular biology professor and gerontology expert who wrote the pioneering book "Time, Cells and Aging," died May 13 in Agoura. Strehler, who taught at USC from 1967 to 1990, was educated at Johns Hopkins University and spent his early career in research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Chicago and the National Institutes of Health. His research led to the discovery of luciferin, the material that contributes to the light in fireflies.

A leak of radioactive Strontium-90 at the Energy Department's Oak Ridge National Laboratory caused unusually high levels of radioactivity in White Oak Creek for several hours Friday. Laboratory spokesman Ed Aebischer said water samples taken Friday morning showed radioactivity levels four times above the creek's normal level. But Friday afternoon samples were normal, Aebischer said, indicating the problem had corrected itself.

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee irradiated hair and nail samples from President Zachary Taylor's remains in a uranium-fueled reactor to determine if the nation's 12th President died of arsenic poisoning. Larry Robinson of the lab's analytical chemistry division said arsenic releases a distinctive gamma ray after irradiation, which means that nuclear technology can detect and measure microscopic quantities of the poison.

Bechtel Jacobs Inc. won a $2.5-billion, 5 1/2-year contract to oversee cleanup at the Energy Department's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said Deputy Energy Secretary Elizabeth Moler. The company, a joint venture of San Francisco-based Bechtel National Inc. and Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. of Pasadena, will take over from Lockheed Martin Corp. as contractor at the site on April 1, Moler said.

The Energy Department has decided to continue selling tritium to private companies despite what it calls a serious pinch on supplies of the radioactive gas used to make nuclear warheads, officials said today. Last year the department, through its Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, sold about 240 grams of tritium to U.S. and foreign companies, and this year's sales are projected at 230 grams, department spokesman Phil Keif said.

Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., reprimanded a scientist who has been accused of falsifying claims that he produced nuclear fusion in tabletop experiments. Rusi Taleyarkhan published a paper in the journal Science in 2002 claiming that he had produced nuclear fusion, long sought as an energy source, by making tiny bubbles collapse in a liquid. A university panel did not investigate the Science paper, which was published when Taleyarkhan was a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, but said he misled the scientific community by claiming his findings had been independently replicated.

A Purdue University scientist who was reprimanded for research misconduct over claims he produced nuclear fusion in tabletop experiments is suing two other faculty members for alleged defamation. Rusi P. Taleyarkhan, a professor of nuclear engineering, said in a complaint filed in Tippecanoe Superior Court that Lefteri Tsoukalas and Tatjana Jevremovic made false and malicious public statements that led to "a successful campaign to ruin Taleyarkhan and his sonofusion research." Taleyarkhan published a paper in the journal Science in 2002, claiming he had produced nuclear fusion using a tabletop experiment that collapsed tiny bubbles in a liquid with powerful ultrasound vibrations.

Scientists Friday irradiated parts of the remains of President Zachary Taylor in an uranium-fueled reactor to determine if the nation's 12th President died of arsenic poisoning. Hair and nail samples taken last week in an exhumation in Louisville, Ky., were delivered to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The samples were placed in the lab's High Flux Isotope Reactor, the Department of Energy's most powerful research reactor, and bombarded with neutrons.

In a case that at first glance could pass for a science fiction movie plot, radioactive frogs are loose at a government lab. About 100 so-called "hot frogs" have been caught hopping away from a contaminated pond where they hatched this spring, officials at the Energy Department's Oak Ridge National Laboratory said. "They don't have six legs and four eyes," said Frank Kornegay, the lab's environmental coordinator. He said they look like ordinary leopard frogs that are common in Tennessee.