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

The 'Drama of It All'

Modeler and observationalist Adam Varble tells how he got into atmospheric science by falling in love with storms.

PNNL's Capabilities in Quantum Information Sciences Get Boost from DOE Grant and New Microsoft Partnership

On Monday, September 24, the U.S. Department of Energy announced $218 million in funding for dozens of research awards in the field of Quantum Information Science. Nearly $2 million was awarded to DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for a new quantum computing chemistry project.

Tom Karnowski, shown here with the Summit supercomputer, is leading a team of scientists using high performance computing to improve mobility and increase fuel efficiency in an HPC4Mobility project at ORNL.

Supercomputing for Better Commuting: In Pursuit of Fuel Economy and Mobility

In a project leveraging computer vision, machine learning, and sensors, Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists are working with private company GRIDSMART Technologies, Inc. to demonstrate how stop lights can be programmed to improve fuel economy and reduce emissions while facilitating the smooth flow of traffic.

Overcoming Resistance

To revive antibiotics and devise new drug designs, Georgia Tech researchers team up with Oak Ridge’s Titan supercomputer.

Argonne Team Brings Leadership Computing to CERN's Large Hadron Collider

A team of collaborators from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory is exploring the use of ALCF supercomputers to help meet the growing computing demands of the ATLAS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The team has used ALCF computing resources for multiple projects aimed at expediting the processing and simulation of data produced by the ATLAS experiment.

PPPL physicist Jongsoo Yoo stands next to the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX)

No Longer Whistling in the Dark: Scientists Uncover a Little-understood Source of Waves Generated Throughout the Universe

Magnetic reconnection, the snapping apart and violent reconnection of magnetic field lines in plasma — the state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei — occurs throughout the universe and can whip up space storms that disrupt cell phone service and knock out power grids. Now scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and other laboratories, using data from a NASA four-satellite mission that is studying reconnection, have developed a method for identifying the source of waves that help satellites determine their location in space.

Argonne researchers suspect these magnetic particles can actually talk to each other in a manner similar to birds to avoid each other in flight. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory / Alexey Snezhko.)

Study of Tiny Vortices Could Lead to New Self-healing Materials and Other Advances

Argonne scientists hope that tiny vortices, driven by various magnetic fields, will be able to move microscopic particles.

Nearly 300 people gathered at the InnovationXLab Summit Sept. 18-19 at DOE's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to discuss energy storage innovation.

DOE’s Energy Storage Summit convenes at SLAC

Nearly 300 representatives from industry, the Department of Energy, DOE national laboratories and the investment sector gathered to discuss energy storage innovation at the inaugural Department of Energy InnovationXLab Summit Sept.18-19 at DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

This simulation, showing the monthly-mean total solar absorption by methane from 2006 to 2010, indicates large regional variability in the gas’ power to absorb incoming energy from the sun. Note the activity over the Sahara Desert, Arabian Peninsula, and portions of Australia – all places where bright, exposed surfaces reflect light upwards to make methane’s absorptive properties up to 10 times stronger than elsewhere on Earth. (Credit: Berkeley Lab)

By Jove! Methane’s Effects on Sunlight Vary by Region

Scientists investigating how human-induced increases in atmospheric methane also increase the amount of solar energy absorbed by that gas in our climate system have discovered that this absorption is 10 times stronger over desert regions such as the Sahara Desert and Arabian Peninsula than elsewhere on Earth, and nearly three times more powerful in the presence of clouds.

National Clean Energy Week: The Quest for Longer-lasting Solar Cells

Maria Chan, nanoscientist at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM), and Ji-Sang Park, a CNM facility user from the Imperial College London, are studying the causes of silicon solar cell degradation in an effort to make solar power more affordable.

cutaway view of the Advanced Light Source shows new equipment (colored rings) that will be installed during the ALS Upgrade project. (Credit: Berkeley Lab)

Toward a New Light: Advanced Light Source Upgrade Project Moves Forward

The Advanced Light Source (ALS), a scientific user facility at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has received federal approval to proceed with preliminary design, planning and R&D work for a major upgrade project that will boost the brightness of its X-ray beams at least a hundredfold.

In a thin film of a solar-energy material, molecules in twin domains (modeled in left and right panels) align in opposing orientations within grain boundaries (shown by scanning electron microscopy in the center panel).

Multimodal Imaging Shows Strain Can Drive Chemistry in a Photovoltaic Material

A unique combination of imaging tools and atomic-level simulations has allowed a team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to solve a longstanding debate about the properties of a promising material that can harvest energy from light.