2018 | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

The Element of Surprise

In a new study from Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Lille in France, chemists have explored protactinium’s multiple resemblances to more completely understand the relationship between the transition metals and the complex chemistry of the early actinide elements.

Painting a Clear Picture of how Nitrogen Oxides are Formed

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and the Technical University of Denmark synthesized more than a decade’s worth of combustion studies to create a new overarching model of how nitrogen oxides are produced.

Drifting and Bouncing Particles can Help Maintain Stability in Fusion Plasmas

Physicists at PPPL have recently found that drifting particles in plasma can forestall instabilities that reduce the pressure crucial to high-performance fusion reactions inside these facilities.

A Game Changer: Metagenomic Clustering Powered by HPC

A new Berkeley Lab algorithm allows biologists to harness the capabilities of massively parallel supercomputers to make sense of a genomic ‘data deluge.’

Increasing Tree Mortality in a Warming World

A mix of factors is contributing to an increasing mortality rate of trees in the moist tropics, where trees in some areas are dying at about twice the rate that they were 35 years ago, according to a far-reaching study from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Mapping Battery Materials With Atomic Precision

An international team led by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) used advanced techniques in electron microscopy to show how the ratio of materials that make up a lithium-ion battery electrode affects its structure at the atomic level, and how the surface is very different from the rest of the material.

Dan Jacobson : Embracing Complexity in Biological Systems

Dan Jacobson is illuminating the workings of biological systems from the molecular scale up by leveraging Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s supercomputing resources to create machine- and deep-learning techniques more easily understood by humans—an evolving field called explainable artificial intelligence (AI).

National Lab and University Researchers Discuss the Future of Energy at AAAS Meeting

On Sunday, Feb. 18, scientists representing four U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories came together to discuss the future of energy research at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas.

Teaching Computers to Guide Science: New Machine Learning Method Sees the Forests and the Trees

While it may be the era of supercomputers and “big data,” without smart methods to mine all that data, it’s only so much digital detritus. Now researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have come up with a novel machine learning method that enables scientists to derive insights from systems of previously intractable complexity in record time.

Big Steps Toward Control of Production of Tiny Building Blocks

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have developed the diagnostic tools that are being used to advance an improved and integrated understanding of plasma-based synthesis — a widely used but poorly understood tool for creating nanostructures.

Neutrons Provide New Polish for Petroleum Processing and More

University of Notre Dame researchers are using neutrons at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to study how specialized molecules might improve petroleum production processes, as well as their potential uses in advanced photovoltaic technologies.

Chemical Sleuthing Unravels Possible Path to the Formation of Life’s Building Blocks in Space

Scientists have used experiments at Berkeley Lab to retrace the chemical steps leading to the creation of complex hydrocarbons in space. They showed pathways to forming 2-D carbon-based nanostructures in a mix of heated gases.