2017 | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

The Flat and the Curious

At the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, researchers have simulated the growth of silicene, a 2-D material with attractive electronic properties. Their work, published in Nanoscale, delivers new and useful insights on the material’s properties and behavior and offers a predictive model for other researchers studying 2-D materials.

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Resisting the Resistance: Neutrons Search for Clues to Combat Bacterial Threats

A team from ORNL’s Neutron Sciences Directorate is using neutrons to study how resistant bacteria, represented by the light blue rod shapes, are evolving to negate the effects of the beta-lactam class of antibiotics.

Nanoscale Engineering for Better Separations: Michael Hu

ORNL’s Michael Hu is the team lead for thermochemical processing under the DOE Bioprocessing Separations Consortium, leading scientists from eight national laboratories as they develop technologies to reduce the cost of expensive catalysts.

Fermilab Expands International Partnerships

Fermilab and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science have been working with international partners to develop and execute agreements that pave the way towards greater scientific collaboration, from the exchange of personnel to the joint design and delivery of components for accelerators and detectors.

Making Glass Invisible: A Nanoscience-Based Disappearing Act

Scientists at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN)—a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory—have demonstrated a method for reducing the surface reflections from glass surfaces to nearly zero by etching tiny nanoscale features into them.

Allison McComiskey Searches the Skies for Aerosol Answers

After 15 years in the field and at the computer, Allison McComiskey is group chief of the global radiation section within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Global Monitoring Division.

Celebrate the Unseen: Attend a Dark Matter Day Event

The events, planned on and around the formally recognized day on October 31, 2017, will engage the public in discussions about dark matter, which together with dark energy makes up about 95 percent of the mass and energy in our universe. Though we know through its gravitational effects that dark matter greatly dwarfs the visible matter in our universe, we know little about it.

Unique High-brilliance X-ray Sheds New Light on Additive Manufacturing Process

AFRL Composite Materials and Processing team researchers used the ultra-bright X-ray at the National Synchrotron Light Source II at Brookhaven National Laboratory to gain better insight into the bonding of composite layers during the additive manufacturing process.

White Rot Fungi’s Size Explained by Breadth of Gene Families Involved

An international team led by László G. Nagy of the Biological Research Center at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and including researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility, sequenced and analyzed four Armillaria fungi, including A. ostoyae, and then compared these genomes with those of related fungi to better understand the evolution of Armillaria’s abilities to spread and infect, and effectively break down all components of plant cell walls.

NSLS-II User Profiles: Riccardo Comin

Riccardo Comin is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he leads the Photon Scattering Laboratory in the division of Condensed Matter Experiments. He performs studies on quantum materials using the Coherent Soft X-Ray scattering beamline, 23-ID-1, at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven Lab.

A Spark in the Dark

The cosmological search in the dark is no walk in the park. With help from Berkeley Lab’s NERSC, Fermilab aims open-source software at data from high-energy physics.

Field of Meteorologists’ Dreams

With more than 200 instruments, the Southern Great Plains (SGP) atmospheric observatory is the world’s largest and most extensive climate research facility. This year, the site celebrates 25 years of operations, helping scientists gain vital insights into the Earth’s cloud, aerosol and atmospheric processes.