2015 | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Perovskite Solar Technology Shows Quick Energy Returns

A joint study by Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University found that perovskite-based solar technology has the quickest energy payback time of all current solar technologies.

Scientists Hijack Light-Loving Bacteria to Make High-Value Products

Scientists at PNNL and the Colorado School of Mines have directed a common bacterium to produce more of a valuable fatty acid, lauric acid, than it typically does.

Unearthing Cornerstones in Root Microbiomes

Scientists from the University of North Carolina, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and DOE’s Joint Genome Institute are developing a better understanding of the soil microbes that important for plant growth, and of how they interact through a variety of signals, including regulatory chemicals called phytohormones.

Closer Look at Microorganism Provides Insight on Carbon Cycling

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee found that microorganisms called archaea living in marine sediments use completely novel enzymes to break down organic matter into carbon dioxide.

Air Pollution Amplified Extreme Weather, Floods in China

Following the trail of the 2013 Sichuan flood in southwest China, researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and their collaborators found that heavy human-caused air pollution over the Sichuan Basin just upwind contributed to the catastrophic flood.

Gut Microbes Enable Coffee Pest to Withstand Extremely Toxic Concentrations of Caffeine

Research by Berkeley Lab and the U.S. Department of Agriculture could lead to new ways to fight beetle that devastates coffee crops worldwide.

Blazing Trails at Brookhaven Lab’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN)

New video gives an inside look at how scientists are using the CFN’s state-of-the-art facilities to explore phenomena hidden on the nanoscale.

When Electrons Cooperate

University of Illinois physicists apply supercomputing to explore unconventional, high-temperature superconductivity

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New Design Could Dramatically Boost Efficiency of Low-Cost Solar Panels

X-ray studies at SLAC's synchrotron pave the way for better methods to convert sunlight to electricity

Zooming In: From Global to Regional Climate Models

As part of an ongoing study at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a DOE Office of Science User Facility, a research team from Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago is using supercomputing resources to investigate the effectiveness of dynamically downscaled climate models.

The MiSIng Piece Revealed: Classifying Microbial Species in the Genomics Era

A team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility and their collaborators developed and evaluated a new method for classifying microbial species that could be supplemented – as needed – by traditional approaches relied on by microbiologists for decades.

Neutrons Find “Missing” Magnetism of Plutonium

Groundbreaking work at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge national laboratories has confirmed plutonium’s magnetism, which scientists have long theorized but have never been able to experimentally observe.