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

DUNE Collaboration Grows to 32 Countries, Prepares for Operations of Prototype Detectors

The international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment collaboration, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab, continues to grow. During the collaboration meeting at Fermilab from May 14-18, the DUNE Institutional Board admitted two new institutions to the collaboration: the Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics, which is the first institution from Portugal to join DUNE, and the University of Bucharest, the second institution from Romania.

Scientists From Around the World Come to New Jersey to Discuss How to Control Plasma-Surface Interactions for Fusion

The 23rd International Conference on Plasma Surface Interactions in Controlled Fusion Devices – the preeminent biennial research conference in this field – begins on June 17 and continues for six days.

NOvA Experiment Sees Strong Evidence for Antineutrino Oscillation

The Fermilab NOvA neutrino experiment announced that it has seen strong evidence of muon antineutrinos oscillating into electron antineutrinos over long distances, a phenomenon that has never been unambiguously observed.

Faces of Summit: Preparing to Launch

As the system batch scheduler and job launcher in the User Assistance and Outreach Group at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, Chris Fuson has worked on five flagship supercomputers—Cheetah, Phoenix, Jaguar, Titan, and is now developing user documentation and training for users on the newest, Summit.

Nuclear Scientists Calculate Value of Key Property that Drives Neutron Decay

Using some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, an international team including scientists from several U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories has released the highest-precision calculation of a fundamental property of protons and neutrons known as nucleon axial coupling.

From Face Recognition to Phase Recognition: Neural Network Captures Atomic-Scale Rearrangements

Researchers from multiple institutions have developed such a “phase-recognition” tool—a way to extract “hidden” signatures of an unknown structure from measurements made by existing tools, by training a neural network to recognize features in a material’s x-ray absorption spectrum that are sensitive to the arrangement of atoms at a very fine scale.

With Supercomputing Power and an Unconventional Strategy, Scientists Solve a Next-Generation Physics Problem

Using the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a team of researchers has calculated a fundamental property of protons and neutrons, known as the nucleon axial coupling, with groundbreaking precision.

X-ray Laser Scientists Develop a New Way to Watch Bacteria Attack Antibiotics

An international team of researchers observed how an enzyme from drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria damages an antibiotic molecule. The new technique provides a powerful tool to examine changes in biological molecules as they happen.

Supercomputers Provide New Window Into the Life and Death of a Neutron

A team led by scientists in the Nuclear Science Division at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has enlisted powerful supercomputers to calculate a quantity known as the “nucleon axial coupling,” or gA – which is central to our understanding of a neutron’s lifetime – with an unprecedented precision.

Scientists Improve Ability to Measure Electrical Properties of Plasma

Recent research by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory indicates a way to more accurately measure the electrical charge that surrounds any solid surface immersed within a plasma.

ORNL Ramps Up Production of Key Radioisotope for Cancer-fighting Drug

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is now producing actinium-227 (Ac-227) to meet projected demand for a highly effective cancer drug through a 10-year contract between the U.S. DOE Isotope Program and Bayer.

New High-Precision Instrument Enables Rapid Measurements of Protein Crystals

A team of scientists and engineers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new scientific instrument that enables ultra-precise and high-speed characterization of protein crystals at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II)—a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven, which generates high energy x-rays that can be harnessed to probe the protein crystals.