News Archive | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Tyler Cooksey, a graduate researcher at the University of Houston, uses ORNL’s Bio-SANS instrument at the High Flux Isotope Reactor to understand how micelles can be improved to create more effective drugs. (Image credit: ORNL/Genevieve Martin)

Neutron Micelle Measurements Lend Insights Into Improved Drug Delivery

To learn more about interactions between drug molecules and micelles, Associate Professor Megan Robertson and graduate students Tyler Cooksey and Tzu-Han Li from the University of Houston (UH) are using neutrons at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

APS employees work to adjust a magnet that will be used in the APS Upgrade. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)

DOE Approves Technical Plan and Cost Estimate to Upgrade Argonne facility; Project will Create X-rays that Illuminate the Atomic Scale, in 3D

The resulting facility will allow researchers to view matter at the atomic scale, in three dimensions, opening new frontiers in discovery science, from advances in pharmaceuticals to new materials for better rechargeable batteries.

Berkeley Lab and Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis researchers Yanwei Lum (left) and Joel Ager have discovered that copper has potential as a catalyst for turning carbon dioxide into sustainable chemicals and fuels without any wasteful byproducts, creating a green alternative to present-day chemical manufacturing. (Credit: Marilyn Chung/Berkeley Lab)

Greener Days Ahead for Carbon Fuels

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) discover copper has potential as a catalyst for turning carbon dioxide into sustainable chemicals and fuels without any wasteful byproducts, creating a green alternative to present-day chemical manufacturing

SBND collaborators Rhiannon Jones (left), Tom Brooks and Nicola McConkey discuss installation of one of the APAs. Photo: Reidar Hahn

International Collaborators Deliver First Critical Components for Upcoming Neutrino Detector

Major components for a new neutrino experiment at the Department of Energy’s Fermilab are arriving at the lab from around the world. The components will be used in the upcoming Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND), an important piece of the laboratory’s rich neutrino program. The first of four anode plane assemblies, highly sensitive electronic components, came to Fermilab in October.

Artist rendering of genome standards being applied to deciphering the extensive diversity of viruses. (Illustration by Leah Pantéa)

Defining Quality Virus Data(sets)

In a report published December 17, 2018, in Nature Biotechnology, JGI partnered with a number of virus experts; as well as representatives from the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC), an open-membership working body that engages the research community in the standards development process; and the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, the premier authority on the official taxonomy of viruses which is currently re-evaluating virus classification based on sequence-based information.

Funding: Department of Energy Issues Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer Funding Opportunity Announcement

U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry has issued the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) second Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs for Fiscal Year 2019.

Argonne scientists Maria Chan, Jianguo Wen, Di-Jia Liu and Lina Chong have discovered a way to reduce the amount of platinum needed in catalysts for hydrogen fuel cells. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)

Argonne Scientists Maximize the Effectiveness of Platinum in Fuel Cells

In new research from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, published in Science, scientists have identified a new catalyst that uses only about a quarter as much platinum as current technology by maximizing the effectiveness of the available platinum.

Matthew Shupe stands on sea ice in the central Arctic Ocean in 2008 during the Sweden-led Arctic Summer Cloud Ocean Study (ASCOS), designed to study the formation and life cycle of low-level arctic clouds. Photo is courtesy of Shupe.

UEC Profile: Arctic Messenger

Buoyed by a sense of adventure and a passion for clouds, Matthew Shupe, a senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) in Boulder, Colorado, studies the fragile Arctic and plans a shipborne field campaign adrift for a year in sea ice.

Funding: Department of Energy to Provide $104 Million to Support Small Businesses

The DOE Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs announced the FY 2019 Phase II Release 1 FOA with approximately $104 million in available funding for previous small business awardees.

Berkeley Lab researcher Alan Rhoades, lead author of a new study on the Sierra snowpack. (Courtesy Alan Rhoades)

Sierra Snowpack Could Drop Significantly By End of Century

a new study by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) that analyzed the headwater regions of California’s 10 major reservoirs, representing nearly half of the state’s surface storage, found they could see on average a 79 percent drop in peak snowpack water volume by 2100.

Clouds come in all shapes and sizes, and now a deep learning model can help detect the finer details in cloud data. Credit: Adriel Kloppenburg on Unsplash

Cloud or No Cloud, that is the Question

Recently, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory teamed up to find out if deep learning—a distinct subset of machine learning—can do a better job at identifying clouds in lidar data than the current physics-based algorithms.

A new Argonne technique can grow material inside membrane structures, changing their chemistry without significantly affecting the pore shape. This allows scientists to improve upon membranes in various ways. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)

Barely Scratching the Surface: A New Way to Make Robust Membranes

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory are designing ways to treat membranes so they can filter liquids better and resist degradation from industrial processing chemicals and biofoulants.