Bioaerosol Sensing Project Seeks to Lower False Alarm Rates

Commercially available, fast-response bioaerosol detectors that can help guard against bioterrorist strikes in large public spaces face a significant hurdle: false alarms. Facility managers responsible for airports, train stations, sports arenas, and other venues will be loathe to install biodetection systems until they can be close to certain that the hardware won’t alarm without cause and force unnecessary evacuations.

But a Department of Homeland Security-funded project involving a group of Sandia National Laboratories researchers promises to answer the question of why false alarms occur and how to bring down the rate. The project, currently called Enhanced Bioaerosol Detection System (EBADS), aims to do just that — enhance the performance of bioaerosol detectors, specifically those based on laser-induced fluorescence (LIF).

EBADS literally takes a second look at what is in the air when a LIF sensor alarms, and determines if there is sufficient bioaerosol present for concern. If successful, EBADS could be paired with existing sensors for a more refined and commercially deployable detector system.
The project is a multilab effort involving Sandia, Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge, and Pacific Northwest national laboratories. Work began in 2005 as a follow-on to Sandia’s PROACT (Protective and Responsive Options for Airport Counter-Terrorism) program.

Initially, various sensors were deployed in the PROACT testbed to understand the false-alarm rate. The testbed included the LLNL Bioaerosol Mass Spectrometer (BAMS) and a selective particle collector that Sandia and Yale University assembled.

“The first phase focused on understanding the problem,” says principal investigator Tom Kulp. The Sandia EBADS team, he says, collected particles present in the air when a false alarm occurred and analyzed them in the field and in the lab.

The researchers came to the conclusion that existing sensors don’t discriminate well between biological and nonbiological particles. If that capability could be enhanced, the result might be a sensor system with significantly fewer false alarms.

The goal, says Kulp, is not to identify particles, but to determine within one to two minutes if there is an unusual amount of biological aerosol in the air — sufficient information to know you’ve got something to worry about.

The project is unique in that it seeks to develop a method, not produce a physical tool. “We are proving a methodology, which would then be implemented with the assistance of industry,” he explains.

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Sandia Researchers Help To Make Cars Smarter

Cars already automatically lock doors when they sense motion and turn on warning lights if they detect potential engine problems.

But they are about to get smarter.

The augmented cognition research team at Sandia National Laboratories is designing cars capable of analyzing human behavior.

The car of the future they are developing may, for example, deduce from your driving that you’re become tired, or during critical situations, tell your cell phone to hold an incoming call so you won’t be distracted.

The project started about five years ago with funding by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Four years ago Sandia partnered with a major commercial automobile manufacturer, and three years ago did actual experiments on European roadways.

“We utilized data that already existed on the car’s computer to collect a wide range of physical data such as brake pedal force, acceleration, steering wheel angle, and turn signaling,” says Kevin Dixon, principal investigator. “And specialized sensors including a pressure sensitive chair and an ultrasonic six-degree-of freedom head tracking system measured driver posture.”

Five drivers were fitted with caps connected to electroencephalogram (EEG) (brainwave) electrodes to gauge electrical activity of the brain as they performed driving functions.

The researchers collected several hours of data in unstructured driving conditions that were imputed into Sandia software, referred to as “classifiers,” that categorized driving behavior. These classifiers could detect certain driving situations such as approaching a slow-moving vehicle or changing lanes in preparation to pass another vehicle.

The system detects the difficulty and stress of the task the driver is attempting. It then tries to modify the tasks and/or environment to lower the stress and improved specified performance parameters.

Similar experiments were conducted for off-road driving where conditions were much less structured than typical roadways.

“The beauty of this is that we aren’t doing anything new or different to the car,” Dixon says. “All the software that can make the determination of ‘dangerous’ or ‘safe’ driving situations would all be placed in the computer that already exists in the car. It’s almost like there is another human in the car.”

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Labs Search for Unexploded Ordnance

It’s a local twist to a nationwide problem: Potential unexploded ordnance (UXO) at old bombing ranges.

Several intact 250-pound bombs recently discovered during a construction project at the old Kirtland bombing range near Double Eagle Airport on Albuquerque’s west mesa have since been safely removed from the area.

A complete site survey was conducted by a team from Sandia National Laboratories and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The excavation was part of an expansion of the Eclipse Aviation facility near Double Eagle Airport for installation of water and power lines. The survey of the Kirtland site, one of the national Wide Area Assessment (WAA) sites, was initiated and funded by the Department of Defense’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) and the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP).

The survey showed no evidence of any target areas south of the runways.

“This southern portion of the site completely encompasses the area in which Eclipse Aviation is expanding, so good news for them,” says Sean McKenna, Sandia project team leader. “We did identify several other potential target areas north of the airport; some of these turned out to be geological noise such as magnetic rocks. About three of them turned out to be legitimate potential ordnance target areas.”

The team used LiDAR (light detection and ranging) imagery to remotely characterize the Kirtland site and the imagery revealed several features indicative of UXO targets. The LiDAR provided a high-resolution topographic map of the area and focused on old targets such as concentric circles, a ship outline, and other areas of interest, McKenna says.

Overall, as much as 20 million acres of land in the United States —that’s about half the size of Maine— could possibly contain UXO. The unexploded ordnance is left over from wars as well as from decades of live-fire training and practice in the United States.

“UXO presents a discrete and acute health hazard, but not the same as the land-mine problem,” says Barry Roberts, a member of the team. The Kirtland site was used for training during and after WWII.

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System Detects Hazardous, Toxic Material in Concealed Packaging

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are developing the next generation of screening devices that will identify hazardous and toxic materials even if concealed by clothing and packaging materials.

Working in the underutilized terahertz (THz) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that lies between microwaves and infrared, a team of Labs scientists is harnessing Sandia’s strengths in a variety of technical areas with the goal of building a highly integrated miniaturized terahertz transmitter-receiver (transceiver) that could make a number of applications possible.

The project, the Terahertz Microelectronics Transceiver Grand Challenge, is in its second of three years of funding through Sandia's internal Laboratory Directed Research and Development program.

Sandia is a U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) laboratory.

“The technology being developed in the Grand Challenge can be used to scan for items such as concealed weapons or materials, explosives, and weapons of mass destruction,” says Mike Wanke, principal investigator. “In addition, we believe it will find applications in advanced communication systems and high-resolution radars. However, the infrastructure needed to move the terahertz technology from the laboratory to the field is unavailable right now. We want to develop that infrastructure and invent the necessary technologies.”

Wanke says over the past three years, “the terahertz situation has begun to change dramatically, primarily due to the revolutionary development of terahertz quantum cascade lasers.”

These tiny lasers are semiconductor sources of terahertz radiation capable of output powers in excess of 100 mW. Previously, such powers could only be obtained by molecular gas lasers occupying cubic meters and weighing more than 100 kg, or free electron lasers weighing tons and occupying entire buildings.

Quantum cascade laser-based systems can be less than the size of a baseball and powered from a nine-volt battery. Sandia has been a leader in developing this new technology and in collaboration with MIT is responsible for several world performance records for the lasers. Also, the Labs and its partners are the only US institutions that have demonstrated the ability to grow the unique semiconductor crystals such that they can be turned into operating terahertz quantum cascade lasers. The crystals are grown by Sandia research scientist John Reno, an expert in molecular beam epitaxy, a method of laying down layers of materials with atomic thicknesses onto substrates.

Sandia researchers spent the first year of the Grand Challenge using Sandia’s unique strengths in integrated microelectronics and device physics to develop components that are now being combined to create an integrated THz microelectronic transceiver, a core enabling element.

The team is currently developing the receiver, doing systems tests and exploring packaging requirements. At the end of three years, the researchers expect to have an actual working prototype capable of detecting the materials and chemicals by reading distinctive molecular spectral “signatures.”

“Most materials and chemicals have their own unique terahertz spectral signatures,” Wanke says. “A terahertz transceiver system would be able to measure, for example, the signature of a gas and determine what it is.”

“Atmospheric scientists and radio astronomers have spent years developing terahertz spectral signature databases to identify chemicals in nebula and planetary atmospheres,” says Greg Hebner, program manager. “Even though the current devices are washing machine-sized, they are located in a few observatories, and one is even flying on a satellite. To address specific national security problems, we are working on reducing the size, weight, and power requirement as well as expanding the existing spectral databases.”

In addition to monitoring for concealed hazardous materials, Mike believes a terahertz system can be used to monitor the air for toxic materials. Using air sampling technology developed at Sandia and other locations, hazardous vapors can be preconcentrated. Shining light from the quantum cascade laser through the concentrated sample provides a direct identification of the vapor. This technology can be used in conjunction with existing mass spectrometer-based systems to reduce false identifications.


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Computer Sim Monitors Contraband Nuke Traffic

A Sandia National Laboratories researcher has developed a simulation program designed to track the illicit trade in fissile and nonfissile radiological material well enough to predict who is building the next nuclear weapon and where they are doing it.

“By using a cluster analysis algorithm coded into a program,” says Sandia researcher David York. “I evaluated those traffic patterns and routes in which thefts, seizures, and destinations of materials were reported. Data from these examinations were enough to allow me to retrospectively depict the A. Q. Kahn network before it was uncovered.”

Kahn is a Pakistani scientist linked to the illicit proliferation of nuclear technical knowledge. Cluster analyses link data of common place, time, or material. Testing a computer simulation on a known past event is one accepted means of establishing the program’s validity.

Sandia is a U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration laboratory.

In the Kahn analysis, York generated an analysis of networked routes indicative of a nuclear trafficking scheme between countries. In several verified incidents, inspectors seized uranium enriched to 80 percent, as well as dual-use items indicative of small-scale development of crude nuclear devices.

In the study, York collected and collated data from 800 open-source incidents from 1992 to the present, along with the movement of dual-use items like beryllium and zirconium. He plotted the incidents on a global information system (GIS) software platform. He came up with a network of countries and routes between countries indicative of an illicit nuclear and radiological trafficking scheme.

“The number of incidents and the quantity and quality of material seized is disturbing,” York says, “particularly because this may represent a small percentage of the actual amount of material being trafficked.”

The situation may be worse than it appears because much information about nuclear material traffic is classified, York says, to prevent embarrassment to countries through which a nuclear weapon or the materials to fabricate a weapon may have passed.

York presented his results in October at the International Safeguards Conference sponsored by the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria. He has also been invited to present his methods and conclusions to the European Union’s Illicit Trafficking Working Group at the June meeting of the IAEA.

How does the method work? “One begins by conducting cluster analyses on the GIS platform for material or activity similar to the incident in question. This gives the analyst an idea of corridors used by potential smugglers. It also indicates where the material might have come from and where it is,” says York. “If the trafficker has only a certain amount of time to reach a destination and you have that information, one can ask what is the shortest route from point A to point B, or find major highways needed to accommodate a large shipment.”

For the tool to be effective, “Enough information must be collected under a cooperative international framework,” York says. “Then info must be analyzed to separate patterns from noise, essentially creating intelligence.”

Nation-states that reuse nuclear fuel through reprocessing can create and ship dangerous materials that previously were confined to the more industrialized world.

“We’re trying to develop a market niche for this kind of tracking program,” says Sandia manager Gary Rochau, “and I think we’re ahead of everyone’s headlights.”

The method can be used to track other materials, such as drugs. “We have a lot of interest from a lot of agencies,” says Rochau.

Trafficking may be engaged in by amateur smugglers trying to feed their families in a post-Soviet era. It may also be practiced by those involved in organized crime who find a lucrative market in moving illicit materials, and by terrorists interested in the potential devastation and psychological effects of the use of nuclear materials.


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