News Archive | U.S. DOE Office of Science (SC)

Rising Stars Seek to Learn from the Master: Mother Nature

Trio recognized for uncovering biochemical secrets behind nature’s efficient production of fuels.

Microscopy Images Put Deep Learning Code to the Test

Using the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF’s) new leadership-class supercomputer, the IBM AC922 Summit, a team from the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) demonstrated the ability to generate intelligent software that could revolutionize how scientists manipulate materials at the atomic scale.

This shows experiments of how well crude oil adheres to nascent and oxide-coated polyvinylidene fluoride membranes (top). It also shows how crude oil might adhere (or depart from) various surfaces (lower left) as well as the oil contact angles on tin oxide-coated membranes after long-term storage in air (lower right).

Argonne Scientists Create New Oil-resistant Filter Technology

Crude oil is sticky stuff and often clogs filters membranes and other equipment used in the oil and gas industry. To address this problem, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have developed a novel approach, which will prolong the lifetime of key industrial equipment.

Learning Continues Throughout Summer for ALCF Student Interns

Every summer, the halls of Theory and Computing Sciences Building at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory are a little noisier. This year, the ALCF interns ranging from undergraduates to Ph.D. candidates came from all over the country to gain hands-on experience with some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.

Two neutron diffraction experiments (represented by pink and blue neutron beams) probed a salty solution to reveal its atomic structure. The only difference between the experiments was the identity of the oxygen isotope (O*) that labeled nitrate molecules

Seeing a Salt Solution's Structure Supports One Hypothesis About How Minerals Form

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutrons, isotopes and simulations to “see” the atomic structure of a saturated solution and found evidence supporting one of two competing hypotheses about how ions come together to form minerals.

Scientists Present Ideas for Next-gen Accelerator Experiments

With powerful beams of electrons 100 to 1,000 times brighter than its predecessor, the upgrade to the Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests (FACET) promises technological breakthroughs that could lead to a new generation of smaller, more affordable particle accelerators for research in particle physics, X-ray science, medicine and other fields.

Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of Technetium-99m

The tracer, technetium-99m (Tc-99m), is the radioactive isotope responsible for 80 percent of the nuclear medical imaging procedures performed in the world. Though the element technetium was discovered in the 1930s, it wasn’t readily available for imaging procedures until three Brookhaven researchers—Walt Tucker, Powell “Jim” Richards, and Margaret Greene—developed a way to generate the isotope on the spot in hospitals.

Researchers Switch Material from One State to Another with a Single Flash of Light

Scientists from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have demonstrated a surprisingly simple way of flipping a material from one state into another, and then back again, with single flashes of laser light.

A. niger section Nigri fungi sequenced and analyzed for this study (clockwise from top left): A. heteromorphus, A. ibericus and A aculeatinus. (All images by Ellen Kirstine Lyhne, DTU.)

Spotlighting Differences in Closely-Related Species

There are millions of fungal species, and those few hundred found in the Aspergillus genus play important roles in areas ranging from industrial production to agricultural plant pathogens. A team led by scientists at the Technical University of Denmark, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility, and the Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI), a DOE Bioenergy Research Center, present the first large analysis of an Aspergillus fungal subgroup, section Nigri.

Physicists Jackson Matteucci and Will Fox with poster displaying their research.

Surprise Finding: Discovering a Previously Unknown Role for a Source of Magnetic Fields

Magnetic forces ripple throughout the universe, from the fields surrounding planets to the gasses filling galaxies, and can be launched by a phenomenon called the Biermann battery effect. Now scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have found that this phenomenon may not only generate magnetic fields, but can sever them to trigger magnetic reconnection – a remarkable and surprising discovery.

This shows X-ray diffraction on a single crystal of an antiferromagnetic material. This material, scientists found, exhibits an extremely large anomalous Hall effect, a sign of its topological character. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)

Scientists Find Unusual Behavior in Topological Material

Argonne scientists have identified a new class of topological materials made by inserting transition metal atoms into the atomic lattice of a well-known two-dimensional material.

STAR Detector on the Move

How long does it take to roll a twelve-hundred-ton detector one hundred feet? In late August, it took 10 hours for the STAR detector to roll from its regular spot in the interaction region of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to the assembly building to undergo maintenance. It’s all part of a program to keep this giant multi-purpose particle detector (kind of like a giant 3D digital camera) in tip-top condition for capturing subatomic smashups at RHIC, a DOE Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory.

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