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

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.

Neutrons Improve Weld Integrity of Underwater Wind Turbine Foundations

Professors Michael Joachim Andreassen from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Zhenzhen Yu from the Colorado School of Mines are using neutron analysis at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to investigate residual stresses expected to occur in the welds of offshore underwater wind turbine foundations.

Genome Research Challenges Previous Understanding of the Origin of Photosynthesis

Plant biologists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in collaboration with colleagues from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), have reconstructed the evolutionary history of photosynthesis to provide new insight into the yet-unfolding story of its origins.

Cloud Radar Simulator Bridges Gap Between Climate Models and Field Data

The simulator bridges differences between climate model-simulated clouds and ARM radar observations in how they address spatial scale and properties of liquid and solid water in the atmosphere. The new tool has been incorporated into the Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project Observation Simulator Package (COSP), a community satellite simulator package.

New Radio Telescope at Brookhaven Lab Sees Space in a Different Light

A new prototype radio telescope has begun observing the universe at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory. Constructed by a team of scientists, engineers, carpenters, and students, the prototype telescope was funded through Brookhaven’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development program.

Laser-Focused: Chengyun Hua Turns the Heat Up on Materials Research

In Chengyun Hua’s research, everything revolves around heat and how it moves. As a Russell Fellow at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Hua carefully analyzes nanoscale heat transfer mechanisms using laser spectroscopy.

Hacking the Bacterial Social Network

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) scientists have determined the molecular structures of a highly specialized set of proteins that are used by a strain of E. coli bacteria to communicate and defend their turf.

Ames Laboratory, UConn Discover Superconductor with Bounce

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory has discovered extreme “bounce,” or super-elastic shape-memory properties in a material that could be applied for use as an actuator in the harshest of conditions, such as outer space, and might be the first in a whole new class of shape memory materials.

SimPath Licenses Novel ORNL System for Enhanced Synthetic Biology

Knoxville, Tennessee-based startup SimPath has licensed a novel cloning system developed by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory that generates and assembles the biological building blocks necessary to synthetically bioengineer new medicines and fuels.

The Blob That Ate the Tokamak: Physicists Gain Understanding of How Bubbles at the Edge of Plasmas Can Drain Heat and Reduce Fusion Reaction Efficiency

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have completed new simulations that could provide insight into how blobs at the plasma edge behave.

Two ORNL-led Research Teams Receive $10.5 Million to Advance Quantum Computing for Scientific Applications

DOE’s Office of Science has awarded two research teams, each headed by a member of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Quantum Information Science Group, more than $10 million over five years to both assess the feasibility of quantum architectures in addressing big science problems and to develop algorithms capable of harnessing the massive power predicted of quantum computing systems.