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

ESnet Workshop Report Outlines Data Management Needs in Metagenomics, Precision Medicine

A report outlining the findings and recommendations from the CrossConnects workshop organized by the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) was published in Standards in Genomic Sciences and highlights the critical need for more effective tools for data management, analysis, and access.

Imaging Flexible DNA ‘Building Blocks’ in 3-D

For the first time, a team of researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Ohio State University have generated 3-D images from 129 individual molecules of flexible DNA origami particles. Their work provides the first experimental verification of the theoretical model of DNA origami.

First Nanoscale Look at How Lithium Ions Navigate a Molecular Maze to Reach Battery Electrode

Lithium ions have to travel through layers of molecules in the electrolyte liquid before they can enter or leave a lithium-ion battery electrode. Tweaking this process could help batteries charge faster.

Seeing the Future of New Energy Materials

Ames Laboratory is pairing newly developed techniques in solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy with a technique called ultrafast magic-angle spinning, which relies on spinning the sample at extremely high frequencies (> 6 million RPM), to improve NMR experiments leading to new insights in new materials, energy conversion and storage.

Berkeley Lab ‘Minimalist Machine Learning’ Algorithms Analyze Images From Very Little Data

Mathematicians at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a new approach to machine learning aimed at experimental imaging data. Rather than relying on the tens or hundreds of thousands of images used by typical machine learning methods, this new approach “learns” much more quickly and requires far fewer images.

Opening Windows for New Spintronic Studies

A surprising discovery about spin-electron interactions in a specialized semiconductor material — a “sandwich" of layers with different properties, buffered by a graphene nanoribbon — could potentially offer major advantages in speed, heat dissipation and power consumption in electronic devices.

Researchers Discover Novel Exciton Interactions in Carbon Nanotubes

Nanotechnology researchers studying small bundles of carbon nanotubes have discovered an optical signature showing excitons bound to a single nanotube are accompanied by excitons tunneling across closely interacting nanotubes.

Seasonal Patterns in the Amazon Explained

Environmental scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have led an international collaboration to improve satellite observations of tropical forests.

Testing Lithium Battery Limitations May Improve Safety and Lifetimes

Researchers are using neutrons at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Lab's High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) CG-1D imaging instrument to study the development of dendrites with hope of improving the design of next-generation lithium ion batteries.

UEC Profile: Sébastien Biraud’s Path to the Critical Science of Measuring Trace Gases

A passion for aviation and scuba diving led the ARM User Executive Committee (UEC) vice chair into a fruitful science career that has taken him around the world.

Setting Sail in the World of Composites: Vlastimil Kunc

Vlastimil Kunc is the polymer team lead at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) at ORNL. He and his colleagues meticulously research the best combination of materials for 3D-printing various objects, leveraging materials science, modeling, and simulations.

Neutrons Reveal the Wild Weyl World of Semimetals

Neutron scattering at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory helped a multi-institutional team led by Tulane University investigate a graphene-like strontium-manganese-antimony material (Sr1-yMn1-zSb2) that hosts what researchers suspect is a Weyl semimetal phase.