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

Where the Rains Come From

Atmospheric scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have found that more frequent, more intense and longer-lasting storms cause heavier spring rain in central US.

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'Tennessine' Acknowledges State Institutions' Roles in Element's Discovery

The recently discovered element 117 has been officially named "tennessine" in recognition of Tennessee’s contributions to its discovery, including the efforts of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and its Tennessee collaborators at Vanderbilt University and the University of Tennessee.

Ultrafast Imaging Reveals Existence of 'Polarons'

A team led by physicist Yimei Zhu at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory has produced definitive evidence that the movement of electrons has a direct effect on atomic arrangements, driving deformations in a material's 3D crystalline lattice in ways that can drastically alter the flow of current.

Research Planned for Unique Spinning Nuclei Nets Prize

Elena Long, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of New Hampshire, has been awarded the 2016 Jefferson Science Associates Postdoctoral Research Prize of $10,000 for her plans to build and test a new kind of target that will allow scientists to explore the physics of spinning nuclei.

Genes and Early Environment Sculpt the Gut Microbiome

Findings by a team of scientists from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) represent an attempt to untangle the forces that shape the gut microbiome, which plays an important role in keeping us healthy.

Scientists Trace ‘Poisoning’ in Chemical Reactions to the Atomic Scale

Researchers have revealed new atomic-scale details about pesky deposits that can stop or slow chemical reactions vital to fuel production and other processes. This disruption to reactions is known as deactivation or poisoning.

PPPL and Princeton Researchers Propose an Explanation for the Mysterious Onset of a Universal Process

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton University have proposed a groundbreaking solution to a mystery that has puzzled physicists for decades.

Ames Laboratory Scientists Create New Compound, First Intermetallic Double Salt With Platinum

Materials researchers Anja-Verena Mudring and Volodymyr Smetana were the first to create and accurately characterize the compound.

NSLS-II User Profiles: Sana Rani & Alicia Broderick

Sana Rani and Alicia Broderick are Ph.D. students in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at the University of Delaware. During an experiment conducted at NSLS-II's Coherent Soft X-Ray 2 (CSX-2) beamline earlier this year, they studied the compound zinc oxide. NSLS-II is a User Facility at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory.

New Tabletop Technique Probes Outermost Electrons of Atoms Deep Inside Solids

Scientists at the Stanford PULSE Institute have invented a new way to probe the valence electrons of atoms deep inside a crystalline solid, using laser light to excite, steer, and bounce the valence electrons off other atoms, giving clues to the material’s atomic structure and function.

A New Understanding of Metastability Clears Path for Next-Generation Materials

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have published a new study that, for the first time, explicitly quantifies the thermodynamic scale of metastability for almost 30,000 known materials.

Engineering a More Efficient System for Harnessing Carbon Dioxide

A team from the Max-Planck-Institute (MPI) for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany, by tapping the DNA synthesis expertise of the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) has reverse engineered a biosynthetic pathway for more effective carbon fixation.