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

New Way to Reduce Plant Lignin Could Lead to Cheaper Biofuels

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Joint BioEnergy Institute have shown for the first time that an enzyme can be tweaked to reduce lignin in plants.

Making Military Vehicle Armor Stronger and Safer with Neutrons

Researchers from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Materials Science and Technology Division, and U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development, and Engineering Center, are studying welded armor and testing a new weld wire using neutron diffraction at the HB-2B beam line of the ORNL High Flux Isotope Reactor.

Updated Workflows for New LHC

Berkeley Lab scientists contribute to new software that helps physics maximize next-generation supercomputing architectures.

PPPL Researchers Advance Understanding of Plasma Turbulence that Drains Heat from Fusion Reactors

A team of researchers - using the spherical tokamak at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and the computers at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center - has shown that a steep density gradient can reduce the strength of electron turbulence so that less heat escapes from the plasma, making the fusion reactor more efficient.

A New Recipe for Biofuel: Genetic Diversity Can Lead to More Productive Growth in Switchgrass Crops

Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory are exploring how grasses, and switchgrass in particular, can enrich the nation's biofuel supply, which is currently dominated by corn, a crop relatively easy to convert to biofuel but also in demand for food, livestock feed and industrial products.

New Iron Oxides Point to an Oxygen Source Inside the Earth

Using three synchrotron x-ray light sources, including the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source (APS), an Office of Science user facility at Argonne, scientists have discovered two new iron oxides.

Developing the Digital Safeguard That Protects the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade at PPPL

To safeguard the National Spherical Torus Experiment Upgrade - the most powerful spherical tokamak in the world - engineers have designed, built, tested and installed a state-of-the-art system consisting of hardware, software and a network of fiber-optic cables that all work together checking critical variables during each NSTX-U shot at a rate of 1,200 times every 200 microseconds.

President Obama Honors Extraordinary Early-Career Scientists

President Obama today named 105 researchers as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers.

Putting the Squeeze on Porous Materials

Compression of crystals of synthetic, porous materials by researchers using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source (APS), an Office of Science user facility, has revealed new insights into how these materials with a range of applications behave under pressure, which could allow scientists to fine tune their properties for industrial, medical and fuel-storage use.

Biofuel Researchers Employ Titan to Probe ‘Lignin Shield’

Recent advancements in biofuel research, including research conducted at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and BioEnergy Science Center (BESC), have rekindled the dream of economically viable ethanol.

Could the Future of Low-Power Computing be Magnetism?

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Argonne National Laboratory have made two recent advances in the field of spin-wave logic, or the potential use of magnetic spins to transmit and manipulate data.

Software Optimized on Mira Advances Design of Mini-Proteins for Medicines and Materials

University of Washington (UW) researchers are using one of the nation's most powerful supercomputers, the 10-petaflop/s Mira at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), to improve their software for designing protein structures to likewise virtually design and test mini-proteins called peptides.