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

Faster, Cheaper, Better: A New Way to Synthesize DNA

In what could address a critical bottleneck in biology research, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), announced they have pioneered a new way to synthesize DNA sequences through a creative use of enzymes that promises to be faster, cheaper, and more accurate.

Department of Energy Announces $15 Million for Ecosystem and Climate Modeling Research

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $15 million in funding for 27 projects in atmospheric and ecological sciences in an effort to improve the power of Earth system models to predict weather and climate.

Major Work Starts to Boost the Luminosity of the LHC

Geneva—The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is officially entering a new stage. On June 15th, a ground-breaking ceremony at CERN celebrates the start of the civil-engineering work for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC): a new milestone in CERN’s history. By 2026 this major upgrade will have considerably improved the performance of the LHC, by increasing the number of collisions in the large experiments and thus boosting the probability of the discovery of new physics phenomena.

Department of Energy Announces $40 Million for Bio-Based Research

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $40 million in funding for 31 projects to advance research in the development of microbes as practical platforms for the production of biofuels and other bioproducts from renewable resources.

Critical Plant Gene Takes Unexpected Detour That Could Boost Biofuel Yields

Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; the DOE Joint Genome Institute, the University of North Texas, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, West Virginia University, ArborGen Inc. and HudsonAlpha Institute have discovered in poplar plant mutations that the same gene involved in making amino acids also regulates the function of genes involved in producing lignin; if applied, it could squeeze more potential out of poplar as a renewable resource for making biofuels and bioproducts.

A History of Neutron Scattering at ORNL

Neutron scattering grew from the nuclear science of the Manhattan Project during the 1940s at what is now Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Today the Department of Energy (DOE) lab in eastern Tennessee operates two powerful neutron scattering facilities for DOE’s Office of Science—the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) and the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS).

Scientists Make the First Molecular Movie of One of Nature’s Most Widely Used Light Sensors

Scientists have made the first molecular movie of the instant when light hits a sensor that's widely used in nature for probing the environment and harvesting energy from light.

Meet Daniel Cacace: Designer of Subsystems for sPHENIX Detector

As a full-time Lab employee, Cacace is designing subsystems for the sPHENIX detector, including hadronic calorimeters, intermediate silicone strip trackers, and electromagnetic calorimeters. Each of these subsystems will detect and track particles produced in collisions at RHIC, and allow nuclear physicists to explore details of the quark-gluon plasma created in these collisions.

Tripling the Energy Storage of Lithium-Ion Batteries

A collaboration led by scientists at the University of Maryland (UMD), the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the U.S. Army Research Lab have developed and studied a new cathode material that could triple the energy density of lithium-ion battery electrodes. Their research was published on June 13 in Nature Communications.

SLAC, Stanford Scientists Discover How a Hardy Microbe’s Crystalline Shell Helps it Reel in Food

Tiny pores in the shells of archaea microbes attract ammonium ions that are their sole source of energy, allowing them to thrive where this food is so scarce that scientists can’t even detect it.

From Moon Rocks to Space Dust: Berkeley Lab’s Extraterrestrial Research

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers participated in a study focusing on the chemical composition of tiny glassy grains of interplanetary particles – likely deposited in Earth’s upper atmosphere by comets – that contain dust leftover from the formative period of our solar system.

Taming Tornadoes at the Nanoscale

Scientists at the University of Notre Dame, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, and the Center for Nanoscale Materials have developed a new dynamic system that enables in situ adjustments of vortex filaments, thereby directly altering the properties of a superconducting material.