2019 | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Scientists at Brookhaven Lab are using a prototype radio telescope to look deep into the universe and gain a better understanding of its accelerated expansion and the nature of dark energy

Radio Telescope Gets Upgrade at Brookhaven Lab

A radio telescope at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has received a significant upgrade, advancing from one dish to four. The upgrades are part of the Laboratory’s ongoing effort to test the merits of a radio telescope for a potential future project between national labs and DOE-sponsored universities.

Colorized scanning electron micrograph of filamentous Ebola virus particles (blue) budding from a chronically infected VERO E6 cell (yellow-green). Credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health

Sophisticated Blood Analysis Provides New Clues About Ebola, Treatment Avenues

A detailed analysis of blood samples from Ebola patients in Sierra Leone is providing clues about the progression of the effects of the Ebola virus in patients and potential treatment pathways. A manuscript discussing the work, led by scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

First Direct View of an Electron's Short, Speedy Trip Across a Border

Electrons flowing across the boundary between two materials are the foundation of many key technologies, from flash memories to batteries and solar cells. Now researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have directly observed and clocked these tiny cross-border movements for the first time, watching as electrons raced seven-tenths of a nanometer – about the width of seven hydrogen atoms – in 100 millionths of a billionth of a second.

Argonne Addresses Obstacles to Clean Water for All

Argonne scientists and collaborators at the University of Chicago and Northwestern are rethinking the water cycle and seeking to make it more effective and efficient.

The ARM Climate Research Facility (Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Research Facility, Jason Tomlinson.)

Argonne's Innovative Community Software is on Weather Scientists' Radar

In 2015, the Python-ARM Radar Toolkit (Py-ART) made its open-source debut. After 4 years, and with contributions from 34 individual editors, it is now a staple in radar science. The toolkit helps scientists analyze radar data to improve models of the Earth’s systems; its growth illustrates the power of community software.

This instrumentation at Japan’s Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory in Wako, Japan, was used in an experiment to create an exotic magnesium isotope. (Credit: Heather Crawford/Berkeley Lab) )

New Measurements of Exotic Form of Magnesium Suggest a Surprising Shape-Shift

Just over a decade ago scientists pushed magnesium atoms to new limits, jamming extra neutrons into their nuclei toward – and possibly reaching – the maximum limit for this element. Now, an international team led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has reproduced this exotic system, known as magnesium-40, and gleaned new and surprising clues about its nuclear structure.

CO2 release by mild heating of the BIG-bicarbonate solid. The released CO2 gas is trapped in the orange balloon, while the released water vapors are trapped by condensation in the ice-cooled U-shaped tube. Credit: Neil J. Williams and Erick Holguin.

Carbon-capture Technology Scrubs CO2 from Power Plants Like Scuba-diving Gear

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a process that could remove CO2 from coal-burning power plant emissions in a way that is similar to how soda lime works in scuba diving rebreathers. Their research, published January 31 in the journal Chem, offers an alternative but simpler strategy for carbon capture and requires 24 percent less energy than industrial benchmark solutions.

Simulations of different geometric states of fluid (red) in rock (tan). Using Titan, researchers validated a geometric model for characterizing fluid flow in porous rock and geologic materials from theory. Image courtesy of James McClure

New Geometric Model Improves Predictions of Fluid Flow in Rock

Researchers led by computational scientist James McClure of Virginia Tech used the 27-petaflop Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) to develop a geometric model that requires only a few key measurements to characterize how fluids are arranged within porous rock—that is, their geometric state.

Argonne researching are using Singularity as part of their work with the CANDLE project, which aims to predict cancer type and drug response using histopathology images from the National Cancer Institute’s Patient-Derived Models Repository. (Image credit: Rick Stevens, Argonne National Laboratory)

Software Stack in a Snapshot

Scaling code for massively parallel architectures is a common challenge the scientific community faces. When moving from a system used for development—a personal laptop, for instance, or even a university’s computing cluster—to a large-scale supercomputer like those housed at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility, researchers traditionally would only migrate the target application: the underlying software stack would be left behind.

Read more about Software Stack in a Snapshot

This graphic shows the “hybrid orbitals” in which atoms can share electrons in cobalt borate catalysts, making it a better water-splitting catalyst than cobalt phosphate. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)

Scientists Take X-ray Aim in Effort to Discover New Fuel Catalyst

In a new study of a related group of cobalt oxides, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory sought to determine why two similar catalysts with somewhat different domain sizes behaved differently.

Standing at the WAND2 instrument, researchers (from left to right) Michael Heere and Yaroslav Filinchuk with ORNL beamline scientists Matthias Frontzek and Simon Kimber. (Image credit: ORNL/Jeremy Rumsey)

Neutrons Unlock Properties of Novel Porous Metal-Hydride for Possible New Energy Storage Applications

Yaroslav Filinchuk, a professor of chemistry from the Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, and Michael Heere, a researcher from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and affiliate of the Forschungsreaktor München II research reactor in Munich, Germany, are using neutron scattering at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to investigate a material that could change the way we harvest valuable industrial materials.

A mysterious process called oxygen oxidation strips electrons from oxygen atoms in lithium-rich battery cathodes and degrades their performance, shown at left. Better understanding this property and controlling its effects could lead to better performing electric vehicles. (Gregory Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

Untangling a Strange Phenomenon that Both Helps and Hurts Lithium-ion Battery Performance

New research offers the first complete picture of why a promising approach of stuffing more lithium into battery cathodes leads to their failure. A better understanding of this could be the key to smaller phone batteries and electric cars that drive farther between charges.