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

Cloudy Feedback on Global Warming

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have identified a mechanism that causes low clouds -- and their influence on Earth's energy balance -- to respond differently to global warming, depending on their spatial pattern and location.

Brookhaven Lab 'Higgs Hunter' Sally Dawson Receives J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics

The award, given by the American Physical Society (APS), recognizes Dawson and her three co-authors of The Higgs Hunter's Guide, a seminal book first published in 1989 on the physics of Higgs bosons—fundamental particles predicted by the accepted theory of particle physics as essential to generating the mass of fundamental particles, and discovered in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012.

New Technique Reveals Powerful, "Patchy" Approach to Nanoparticle Synthesis

Scientists from multinational institutions working with the Center for Functional Nanomaterials have used cutting-edge electron tomography techniques—a process of 3D reconstructive imaging—to pinpoint the structure and composition of polymer nano-patches, foundational work for the process of testing and tailoring customizable nanoparticles.

Peter Thornton: Bridging Titan and the Tundra with Hands-on Fieldwork

Thornton is the leader of the Terrestrial Systems Modeling group in the Environmental Sciences Division at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is also the head of modeling for the Arctic team of the DOE’s Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments, which has brought him to Alaska several times to study the effects of climate change up-close, most recently this past July.

Inclusion Increases Innovation: Recap of the Diversity & Inclusion Workshop at Brookhaven Lab

More than 300 people attended the diversity and inclusion workshop Sept. 7 and 8, including more than 200 Brookhaven Lab science and support staff plus an additional 100 participants who traveled from DOE, national laboratories from across the nation, and others from schools in the New York State region.

Nickel-78 is a ‘Doubly Magic’ Isotope, Supercomputing Calculations Confirm

Theoretical physicists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory recently used Titan, America’s most powerful supercomputer, to compute the nuclear structure of nickel-78, consisting of 28 protons and 50 neutrons, and found that this neutron-rich nucleus is indeed doubly magic.

First Results of NSTX-U Research Operations Presented at the International Atomic Energy Agency Conference in Kyoto, Japan

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratories (PPPL) and collaborating institutions presented results from research on the National Spherical Torus Experiment Upgrade (NSTX-U) last week at the 26th International Atomic Energy Agency Conference (IAEA) in Kyoto, Japan.

Deep Down Fracking Wells, Microbial Communities Thrive

Scientists led by researchers at Ohio State University found that microbes actually consume some of the chemical ingredients commonly used in the fracking process, creating new compounds which in turn support microbial communities below ground.

Addition of Seventh HFIR Cycle Provides More Research Time for the User Community

For the first time since 2011, scientific users of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s High Flux Isotope Reactor were able to take advantage of a seventh cycle, allowing for 25 extra days of neutron production and available time for new experiments on HFIR’s 12 beam lines in fiscal year 2016.

Quantum-Dot Solar Windows Evolve with ‘Doctor-Blade’ Spreading

A Los Alamos National Laboratory research team demonstrates an important step in taking quantum dot, solar-powered windows from the laboratory to the construction site by proving that the technology can be scaled up from palm-sized demonstration models to windows large enough to put in and power a building.

Argonne Researchers Posit Way to Locally Circumvent Second Law of Thermodynamics

One implication for the research could be a way to one day remotely power a device — that is, the energy expended to light the lamp could take place anywhere.

Cancer's Big Data Problem

Researchers at Argonne, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories are using the DOE supercomputers and sophisticated computational models to find patterns in large datasets of cancer data, seeking to understand key protein interactions, predict drug response and automate patient information extraction to inform treatment strategies.

Read more about Cancer's Big Data Problem