Rachel Mandelbaum prepares to measure weak gravitational lensing, the tiny deflections of light from distant galaxies due to the gravitational influence of dark matter and visible matter that the light rays pass by on their way to Earth. Those measurements can help answer fundamental questions.
Scientists used statistical tools, machine learning, and models run on supercomputers to explore nuclear force models. This allows scientists to make quantitative predictions about the structure of atomic nuclei and their interactions. Scientists used this approach to study the nucleus of lead-208 and predict its neutron skin. The results indicate the neutron skin is constrained by nucleon-nucleon scattering data.
“Twisted” X-ray beams carrying orbital angular momentum hold great promise for imaging and probing materials at the nanoscale. Scientists have now developed and demonstrated a new technique that uses a special patterned array of engineered nanoscale magnets called an artificial spin ice to impart OAM to X-ray beams. The beams can be switched on and off using changes in temperature and magnetic fields.
Atomic nuclei take a range of shapes, from spherical to football-like deformed. Spherical nuclei are often described by the motion of a small fraction of the protons and neutrons, while deformed nuclei tend to rotate as a collective whole. A third kind of motion, nuclear vibration, has been proposed since the 1950s. However, a new investigation of cadmium-106 nuclei found that these nuclei rotate, not vibrate, counter to scientists’ expectations.
Moiré patterns can occur when scientists stack two-dimensional crystals with mismatched atomic spacings. Moiré superlattices display exotic physical properties that are absent in the layers that make up the patterns. Researchers have discovered a new property in the moiré superlattices formed in tungsten diselenide/tungsten disulfide crystals, in which the electrons “freeze” and form an ordered array.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced awards totaling more than $68 million that will go to 53 small businesses that are solving scientific problems. Projects include developing tools for climate research and advanced materials and technologies for clean energy conversion. Understanding the climate and the ability to convert and store energy are instrumental to meeting President Biden’s goal of a completely clean electrical grid by 2035 and net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050.
In the past several years, nuclear physics researchers have initiated a flurry of machine learning projects and published many papers on the subject. A new survey by 18 authors from 11 institutions summarizes this work to provide an educational resource and a roadmap for future endeavors in the field.
At Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source and its Center for Nanoscale Materials, physicist Volker Rose’s team built a one-of-a-kind microscope. They developed techniques to combine the chemical sensitivity of synchrotron X-rays with the high spatial resolution of scanning tunneling microscopy.
Instruments that measure subatomic particles in nuclear physics experiment generate enormous amounts of data. Nuclear physicists are turning to artificial intelligence and machine learning methods to process this torrent. Recent tests of two systems that use machine learning and artificial intelligence-based streaming readout found that these systems were able to perform real-time processing of raw experimental data.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $80 million, provided by the Office of Science, to support fundamental research to drive the innovation cycle in support of the Accelerate Innovations in Emerging Technologies (Accelerate) initiative.
Characterizing plutonium is important to environmental studies, nuclear plant and materials safety, and studies of nucleosynthesis and neutron star mergers. Scientists therefore need ways to detect ultra-trace amounts of plutonium. Researchers have now used special lasers to study the fingerprints of plutonium’s photoionization. The technique allowed researchers to identify ultra-trace amounts of plutonium atoms at record levels of efficiency.
The protons and neutrons that build the nucleus of the atom frequently pair up in fleeting partnerships called short-range correlations. These can form between a proton and a neutron, between two protons, or between two neutrons. Scientists recently discovered that in helium-3 and tritium, which have small, light nuclei, some types of correlations are less common than they are in larger, heavier nuclei.
Most methods of editing bacterial genomes use plasmids to transfer DNA between bacterial cells, but this approach isn’t always efficient in mixed microbial communities. This research instead developed a new phage-based DNA delivery tool that leverages these viruses’ ability to inject DNA into host bacteria. The researchers also used this tool to edit individual genes inside a target host organism within a living microbial community.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science is pleased to announce that the Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program is now accepting applications for the 2023 Solicitation 1 cycle. Applications are due 5:00pm Eastern Time on Wednesday, May 3, 2023.
Recent experiments involving a tiny left-right asymmetry in electron scattering off lead-208 and calcium-48 indicate a disagreement between the experiments’ results and the predictions of global nuclear models. This result indicates a need to investigate limitations of current nuclear models or other sources of uncertainty. This has repercussions for scientists studying topics from neutron skins to nuclear symmetry energy to neutron star physics.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the schedule and deadlines for upcoming events and submissions associated with the competition for the management and operating (M&O) contract for the Fermi National Acceleratory Laboratory (FNAL).
The plasma in a fusion device can erode device walls, releasing particles in a process called sputtering. These particles can reduce a device’s performance and lifespan. In this study, researchers examined how the smoothness of device surfaces changes at small scales over time and how this affects erosion. This research will aid in the future design and operation of fusion power plants.
Blends of hydrogen and methane are a promising alternative vehicle fuel that could help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. To make these fuels viable, researchers need to understand how they burn, especially in small, turbocharged internal combustion engines. In this study, researchers examined the impact of non-thermal chemical kinetics on “super-knock,” a combustion mechanism that can cause severe engine damage.
Engineering professor Jamey Young at Vanderbilt University is developing new strategies for engineering the metabolism of cyanobacteria. He is working to create “green cell factories” for producing renewable fuel compounds.
The Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) recently released a suite of features and a protocol for performing sophisticated microbiome analysis that can accelerate research in microbial ecology. KBase helps researchers understand which organisms live in an environment and how they interact. The tool’s new features reduce the time required to process sequencing data and characterize genomes and help scientists collaboratively analyze genomics data and build research communities.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Technology Transitions and Office of Science today jointly released a request for information (RFI) to strengthen place-based innovation activities by leveraging DOE national laboratories, plants, and sites for the benefit of the American people.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $9.1 million in funding for 13 projects in Quantum Information Science (QIS) with relevance to nuclear physics. Nuclear physics research seeks to discover, explore, and understand all forms of nuclear matter that can exist in the universe – from the subatomic structure of nucleons, to exploding stars, to the emergence of the quark-gluon plasma seconds after the Big Bang.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $125 million for basic research on rechargeable batteries to provide foundational knowledge needed to transform and decarbonize our energy system through the development and adoption of cost-effective and clean energy sources. The national, economic, and environmental security challenges will not be met solely by incremental improvements to existing clean energy technologies but instead will require transformational technologies founded on new fundamental knowledge and capabilities developed through basic scientific research.
Today the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that will continue a longstanding collaboration on scientific and engineering research and enable increased partnership to address the most important challenges of the 21st century.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $105 million for research in biopreparedness. This funding, provided by the Office of Science, will support fundamental research to accelerate breakthroughs in support of the Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment (BRaVE) initiative.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) initiated the competition for the management and operating (M&O) contract for the Fermi National Acceleratory Laboratory (FNAL).
The enzymes polyketide synthases and nonribosomal peptide synthetases can shuffle their parts, allowing them to produce new chemicals. To help scientists design these enzymes, researchers have improved ClusterCAD. This tool helps users modify these enzymes for synthetic biology applications. New improvements include an expanded database, powerful search tools, and helpful new features within the interface.
How do microbes in soil communities interact to release nutrients from material in the soil? Researchers have discovered that microbes able to break down one type of available food, chitin, are critical for the community’s success but do not necessarily grow the fastest. Instead, species with the ability to use a wide range of food sources produced by other members of the community become the most abundant. The researchers also found that individual microbes can change their behavior when grown alone or in the community.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $200 million for Energy Earthshot Research Centers (EERCs). This funding, provided by the Office of Science, will support fundamental research to accelerate breakthroughs in support of the Energy Earthshots Initiative.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science (SC) will support nearly 100 high schoolers, recent high school graduates, and early undergraduate students from underrepresented groups and underserved schools in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through awards for five Pathway Summer Schools at six national laboratories. The funding comes from SC’s Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) initiative (see details at https://science.osti.gov/initiatives/RENEW). Sponsored by the Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS), the WDTS RENEW Pathway Summer Schools aim to diversify the STEM pipeline via hands-on learning opportunities at DOE national laboratories.
Recent research shows that magnetic fields can spontaneously emerge in a plasma if the plasma has a temperature anisotropy. This mechanism is known as the Weibel instability. This new research is the first to unambiguously observe the Weibel instability in the laboratory. It offers a possible solution to the problem of the origin of the microgauss-level magnetic fields that permeate the galaxies.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $2.3 million in funding for 10 projects that will pair private industry with DOE’s National Laboratories to overcome challenges in fusion energy development, an area of research that captivated global attention in December when the Department announced that a team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had achieved fusion ignition. Ignition, in which more energy was derived from fusion than was put into it, had never been accomplished before in a laboratory setting and raised hopes that fusion energy could play a major role in the transition to clean energy.
The DOE Early Career Research Program Award allowed Ming Ye at Florida State University to develop interdisciplinary approaches to quantify and reduce uncertainty in environmental studies.
When a spacecraft enters a thick atmosphere at a high velocity, it rapidly compresses the gas in front of it, creating a hot, dense plasma. To protect against damage, spacecraft are typically covered by a heat shield material. Scientists for the first time used a tokamak to study what happens to these materials in a hot plasma. The research creates a path to improving heat shield materials for future planetary exploration.
Lignin, the complex polymer that gives plants their structural integrity, makes them difficult to break down and creates challenges for the creation of biochemicals and bioproducts. Building blocks that are present in small amounts in the lignin of the bioenergy crop poplar are valuable platform chemicals that are easy to “clip-off” during plant deconstruction. Scientists engineered a new type of poplar to have more of a specific building block in its lignin and less lignin overall. This results in wood that is easier to deconstruct and more valuable as a bioproduct raw material.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced awards totaling $17 million for small businesses in 25 states. The 77 projects are in the fields of advanced scientific computing and scientific instrumentation that support DOE’s clean energy mission.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $56 million to provide research opportunities to historically underrepresented groups and institutions in STEM. The funding, through the DOE Office of Science’s Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) initiative, will support internships, mentorship, and training programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), other Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), and other research institutions. These investments will diversify American leadership in the physical, biological, and computational sciences to ensure America’s best and brightest students have pathways to STEM fields.
The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science will sponsor the participation of 148 undergraduate students and seven faculty members in three STEM-focused workforce development programs at 13 DOE national laboratories and the national fusion facility during Spring 2023. Collectively, these programs ensure DOE and our nation have a diverse, strong, sustained workforce trained in the skills needed to address the energy, environment, and national security challenges of today and tomorrow.
Scientists are working to transform carbon dioxide into chemical solar fuels. To advance this process, researchers have identified a new hybrid material that consists of a light-absorbing semiconductor and a cobalt catalyst. The research extends scientific efforts to identify new ways to store energy and to efforts to understand how light-absorbing hybrid systems can drive the catalytic production of chemical fuels using solar energy.
In the summer, sea- and bay-breeze circulations are important drivers of the weather in southeastern Texas. This research used machine learning techniques to unpack how these circulations interact with larger-scale weather systems to affect how thunderstorms form in the Houston area. These insights are helping researchers focus their study of aerosol and cloud life cycle, aerosol-cloud interactions, and air quality during the TRACER field campaign in the Houston area in 2021 and 2022.
Researchers are combining experimental, theoretical, and observational data on neutron stars to constrain the equation of state (EOS) and to glean the composition of their interiors. Different techniques probe the EOS at different densities, thereby creating a “density ladder” that aims to connect the various rungs. The findings indicate a possible phase transition in the interior of neutron stars.
The proton is the only composite building block of matter that is stable in nature, making its properties key to understanding the formation of matter. A team of physicists measured the proton’s electric polarizability, which characterizes the proton’s susceptibility to deformation, or its “stretchability,” in the presence of a photon’s electromagnetic field. The results reveal a puzzling new structure – a bump in the polarizability that nuclear theory cannot explain.
When the nuclei of atoms are about to collide in an experiment, their centers never perfectly align along the direction of relative motion, leading to complex collisions. A deblurring algorithm from optics can help nuclear physicists examine the pattern of emissions from these collisions as if the initial nuclear centers were under tight control.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $35 million to build research capacity, infrastructure, and expertise at institutions historically underrepresented in science, including minority serving institutions (MSIs) and emerging research institutions (ERIs). FAIR will enhance research at these institutions on clean energy, climate, and additional topics spanning the Office of Science portfolio. This investment will help develop a diverse, vibrant, and excellent scientific workforce and contribute to the science innovation ecosystem.
For the first time, researchers produce more energy from fusion than was used to drive it, promising further discovery in clean power and nuclear weapons stewardship.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced 41 awards totaling $32 million to 37 institutions to support historically underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and diversify American leadership in the physical sciences, including energy and climate. The funding, through the DOE Office of Science’s Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) initiative, will support internships, training programs, and mentor opportunities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), other Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), and other research institutions. Ensuring America’s best and brightest students have pathways to STEM fields will be key to achieving President Biden’s energy and climate goals, including achieving a net-zero carbon economy by 2050.
Lignin in plant cell walls can be broken down into component polymers that can in turn be converted into valuable bioproducts, but deconstructing lignin is difficult. Researchers have now showed that some solvents are more effective than others at getting between the cellulosic and lignin polymers in switchgrass variants.
To understand how plants respond to drought condition, researchers combined three cutting-edge metabolomic and imaging technologies at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory. The study revealed that different species of plants use different strategies to survive drought conditions.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $11.24 million for five topical theory collaborations in nuclear physics (NP). These projects bring together leading nuclear theorists to collaboratively focus on solving challenging problems central to advancing knowledge in nuclear physics.
Heavy ion collisions using gold nuclei found a phase of nuclear matter with freely moving quarks and gluons, the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). Scientists are aiming to establish if a critical point exists in the phase diagram of nuclear matter, where the QGP would coexist with a gas of protons, neutrons, and other particles. Research at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider indicates that if this critical point exists, it is between energies of 3 and 20 giga-electron volts.
RSS
Medicine keyboard_arrow_right
Sciencekeyboard_arrow_right
Life keyboard_arrow_right
Business keyboard_arrow_right
Journal News keyboard_arrow_right
By Location keyboard_arrow_right
Meetings, Grants, and Events keyboard_arrow_right