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

Department of Energy Selects 84 Scientists to Receive Early Career Research Program Funding

The Department of Energy (DOE) has selected 84 scientists from across the nation – including 30 from DOE’s national laboratories and 54 from U.S. universities – to receive significant funding for research as part of the DOE Office of Science’s Early Career Research Program.

Scientists Use Neutrons to Take a Deeper Look at Record Boost in Thermoelectric Efficiency

Neutron facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are aiding scientists in research to boost the power and efficiency of thermoelectric materials. These performance increases could enable more cost-effective and practical uses for thermoelectrics, with wider industry adoption, to improve fuel economy in vehicles, make power plants more efficient, and advance body heat–powered technologies for watches and smartphones.

Berkeley Lab Researchers Use Machine Learning to Search Science Data

A team of researchers from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley are developing innovative machine learning tools to pull contextual information from scientific datasets and automatically generate metadata tags for each file. Scientists can then search these files via a web-based search engine for scientific data, called Science Search, that the Berkeley team is building.

Scientists Isolate Protein Data from the Tiniest of Caches – Single Human Cells

Scientists from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, working with counterparts at the University of Rochester Medical Center, have obtained a slew of key information about proteins, the molecular workhorses of all cells, from single human cells for the first time.

The Journey of Actinium-225: How Scientists Discovered a New Way to Produce a Rare Medical Radioisotope

Although research into promising cancer treatments using actinium-225 started with a rare and limited source, DOE scientists have found a new way to dramatically increase its supply.

Fermilab Develops Forefront Accelerator Components for the High-Luminosity LHC

A groundbreaking ceremony was held on June 15th to celebrate the start of civil engineering work for a major upgrade to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. When complete, the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) will produce five to seven times more proton-proton collisions than the currently operating LHC, powering new discoveries about our universe.

Faster, Cheaper, Better: A New Way to Synthesize DNA

In what could address a critical bottleneck in biology research, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), announced they have pioneered a new way to synthesize DNA sequences through a creative use of enzymes that promises to be faster, cheaper, and more accurate.

Department of Energy Announces $15 Million for Ecosystem and Climate Modeling Research

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $15 million in funding for 27 projects in atmospheric and ecological sciences in an effort to improve the power of Earth system models to predict weather and climate.

Major Work Starts to Boost the Luminosity of the LHC

Geneva—The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is officially entering a new stage. On June 15th, a ground-breaking ceremony at CERN celebrates the start of the civil-engineering work for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC): a new milestone in CERN’s history. By 2026 this major upgrade will have considerably improved the performance of the LHC, by increasing the number of collisions in the large experiments and thus boosting the probability of the discovery of new physics phenomena.

Department of Energy Announces $40 Million for Bio-Based Research

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $40 million in funding for 31 projects to advance research in the development of microbes as practical platforms for the production of biofuels and other bioproducts from renewable resources.

Critical Plant Gene Takes Unexpected Detour That Could Boost Biofuel Yields

Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; the DOE Joint Genome Institute, the University of North Texas, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, West Virginia University, ArborGen Inc. and HudsonAlpha Institute have discovered in poplar plant mutations that the same gene involved in making amino acids also regulates the function of genes involved in producing lignin; if applied, it could squeeze more potential out of poplar as a renewable resource for making biofuels and bioproducts.

A History of Neutron Scattering at ORNL

Neutron scattering grew from the nuclear science of the Manhattan Project during the 1940s at what is now Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Today the Department of Energy (DOE) lab in eastern Tennessee operates two powerful neutron scattering facilities for DOE’s Office of Science—the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) and the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS).