• share
• favorite_border

As scientists have developed new technologies for gene sequencing, the availability of sequenced genes has grown exponentially, but scientists’ ability to decipher the functions encoded in these sequences has not kept pace. In this study, researchers working with green algae discovered that physically clustered genes in eukaryotic genomes can be maintained over hundreds of millions of years. This phenomenon can help predict function.

• share
• favorite_border

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $2 million to establish a traineeship program to advance workforce development in the field of isotope production, processing, and associated research, with preference to minority serving institutions.

• share
• favorite_border

Infrastructure planning requires accurately predicting how tropical cyclones respond to environmental changes. To make those predictions, researchers use Earth system models. In this research, scientists analyzed tropical cyclones simulated by the Department of Energy’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). They found that high resolution is critical to simulating tropical cyclones and their interactions with the ocean.

• share
• favorite_border

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $10 million for foundational research to address the challenges of managing and processing the increasingly massive data sets produced by today’s scientific instruments, facilities, and supercomputers in order to facilitate more efficient analysis.

• share
• favorite_border

The aerosol particles that serve as seeds for cloud formation are major drivers of global climate change. However, the sources and chemical processes behind the formation of these particles are unclear. Researchers have now found that carbon-based compounds from natural biological sources drive the formation of new particles. These sources play key roles in producing the large number of small particles in the atmosphere above the Amazon rainforest.

• share
• favorite_border

Bacteria in groundwater move in surprising ways. They can passively ride flowing groundwater and can actively move on their own in what scientists call “run and tumble” behavior. Scientists studied two kinds of microorganisms to improve the mathematical models that describe how bacterial run and tumble when transported by groundwater.

• share
• favorite_border

During cellular metabolism, enzymes break down and build fats, proteins, energy carriers, and genetic information. These processes happen through a complex network of reactions. Until now, studies to identify specific reactions that regulate the overall flow through a network were too complex to do regularly. Now scientists have developed new methods that combine cutting-edge techniques to predict which enzymes control common biochemical pathways.

• share
• favorite_border

Microbes use chemical signals to exchange information with their plant hosts. These signals initiate symbiotic associations. Scientists believe some of these chemical signals are unique and are specialized for specific purposes or audiences. One example is the compounds called lipo-chitooligosaccharides (LCOs). Researchers previously believed that LCOs are for specific fungi, but new research shows that these compounds are ubiquitous.

• share
• favorite_border

An international team has performed one of the world’s most sensitive laboratory searches for a hypothetical subatomic particle called the “sterile neutrino.” The novel experiment uses radioactive beryllium-7 atoms created at the TRIUMF facility in Canada. The research team then implants these atoms into sensitive superconductors cooled to near absolute-zero.

• share
• favorite_border

Today the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a plan to provide $25 million for basic research toward the development of a quantum internet.

• share
• favorite_border

The Department of Energy Office of Science (SC) supports the scientific community by allocating research funding, providing access to state-of-the art scientific user facilities, and stewarding community data.

• share
• favorite_border

His Early Career Research award allowed Arán Garcia-Bellido to transition from his work at the Fermilab Tevatron collider - establishing the rare production of top quarks with bottom quarks – to setting up a group at the LHC focused the search for the Higgs boson and possible new generation of quarks.

• share
• favorite_border

Pions consist of a quark paired to an antiquark and are the lightest particles to experience the strong force. But until recently scientists did not understand pions’ internal structure because of their short lifespan. Now, an advance in supercomputer calculations using lattice Quantum Chromodynamics may allow scientists to provide an accurate and precise description of pion structure for the first time.

• share
• favorite_border

Creating a fusion plasma requires deep understanding of the behavior of various isotopes of hydrogen. But plasma scientists have long been puzzled by a mysterious contradiction-- the disconnect between theoretical predictions and experimental observations of how fusion energy confinement varies with the mass of hydrogen isotopes used to fuel the plasma. A new analysis has helped unravel this mystery.

• share
• favorite_border

High performance computer (HPC) systems are incredibly complex, with millions of cores. This creates many chances for small system faults that can affect HPC-based simulations and calculations. Researchers have developed a new approach to fault tolerance called coded computing that requires less time and less computer power to run than traditional fault tolerance solutions.

• share
• favorite_border

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) closely replicate the structure of the human brain, making them an important step on the road to developing artificial intelligence. Researchers recently advanced a key technique for training SNNs using an evolutionary approach. This approach involves recognizing and making use of the different strengths of individual elements of the SNN.

• share
• favorite_border

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced plans to provide $5 million to support a DOE traineeship program to address workforce needs in high energy physics instrumentation.

• share
• favorite_border

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced awards totaling $110 million for diverse small businesses working on scientific, clean energy, and climate solutions for the American people.

• share
• favorite_border

Susannah Tringe is the Deputy for User Programs of the Joint Genome Institute. Her 2011 Early Career Award research revealed complex interactions among soil microbes, soil nutrient content, water salinity, and other features that ultimately determine net greenhouse gas fluxes.

• share
• favorite_border

Neutron scattering has unveiled new insights into the performance of a novel metal catalyst used to convert nitrogen into ammonia. The key discovery is that the hydrogen atoms on the surface of the material—not caged inside the catalyst—play the most significant role in the ammonia synthesis. The material catalyzes ammonia synthesis with significantly less energy than the traditional iron-based catalysts.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers developed a new method to synthesize and screen libraries of peptoid nanostructures. This enables researchers to design structures that can target bacteria and other microorganisms that can cause disease. It is the first rapid method for synthesizing and discovering compounds that can act like antibodies.

• share
• favorite_border

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $29 million to develop new tools to analyze massive amounts of scientific information, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced algorithms.

• share
• favorite_border

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced up to $54 million in new funding for the agency’s National Laboratories to advance basic research in microelectronics. Microelectronics are a fundamental building block of modern devices such as laptops, smartphones, and home appliances, and hold the potential to power innovative solutions to challenges like the climate crisis and national security.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have devised a new way to build nanomaterials that can maintain their structural integrity and functionality in ways relevant to drug delivery. The team developed a class of molecular coatings compatible with biological environments. They used these coating to stabilize wireframed DNA origami cages that can carry an anticancer drug with a slower release of the medicine over time than possible with noncoated counterparts.

• share
• favorite_border

Paul Dauenhauer leads a group that has developed a new catalytic reactor that permits investigation of the precise energetics of biopolymer deconstruction. Key transitions in non-food biomass activation can now be observed, with implications for fuels, chemicals, and materials synthesis.

• share
• favorite_border

Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced plans to provide up to $12 million for basic research on advanced 5G and quantum networking. Our modern life has been transformed by wireless and cellular networks, creating a world where humans all over the globe can communicate with each other instantaneously.

• share
• favorite_border

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced up to $34.5 million to harness cutting-edge research tools for new scientific discoveries, including clean energy and climate solutions. Two new funding opportunities will support researchers using data science and computation-based methods—including artificial intelligence and machine learning—to tackle basic science challenges, advance clean energy technologies, improve energy efficiency, and predict extreme weather and climate patterns.

• share
• favorite_border

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced up to $30 million to support scientific research that will ensure American businesses can reliably tap into a domestic supply of critical elements and minerals, such as lithium, cobalt and nickel, needed to produce clean energy technologies.

• share
• favorite_border

he U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $18 million in new funding to advance particle accelerator technology, a critical tool for discovery sciences and optimizing the way we treat medical patients, manufacture electronics and clean energy technologies, and defend the nation against security threats.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers design superalloys by embedding particles in a metal matrix. The particles and matrix can deform differently under stress, causing components to fail. Researchers used neutrons to probe the internal stresses in two superalloys at high temperatures and loads to obtain new insights on deformation and validate mathematical models. This will lead to components with longer life and higher reliability.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have long sought to develop synthetic membranes with the selectivity and high-speed transport of natural membranes. New research designed a unique polymer-based material as effective as natural membrane proteins in transporting protons through membranes. The finding could have applications in batteries, water purification, biofuels, and pharmaceuticals, and in scalable synthetic materials for entirely new technologies.

• share
• favorite_border

Biological molecules are nearly invisible to the X-rays used to make 3D CT scans. To make these scans of biomolecules, researchers must attach a tag to the molecules that glows when illuminated with X-rays. In this study, scientists used this technique and a tiny synchrotron X-ray beam to image a membrane protein on the surface of a single E. coli bacteria.

• share
• favorite_border

: Most of the carbon contained in soil is in the form of organic matter. Scientists do not fully understand how variation in plant inputs, microbial communities, and soil physical and chemical attributes influence the makeup of this organic matter. A new study found that soil in switchgrass fields had more water-soluble carbon compounds than soil in corn fields, an important finding for biofuel crop selection.

• share
• favorite_border

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced plans to provide $30 million for Quantum Information Science (QIS) research that helps scientists understand how nature works on an extremely small scale—100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. QIS can help our nation solve some of the most pressing and complex challenges of the 21st century, from climate change to national security.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists can now study the strong force with a novel method of accessing the space between protons and neutrons within a nucleus. The first direct probes have tested the validity of leading theories that describe the interactions between protons and neutrons in nuclei. This research confirms that current theoretical models describe the behavior of protons and neutrons quite well.

• share
• favorite_border

In principle, the universe should contain objects composed only of gluons in a sea of quark-antiquark pairs. However, scientists’ experiments have never definitively confirmed these hypothetical objects, called “glueballs.” Now, scientists are using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider to search for signs of these glueballs.

• share
• favorite_border

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s Aaron Chou developed the Holometer experiment to measure noise (unwanted data on a transmitted signal) more precisely. He now develops equipment for ultrasensitive dark matter detection and quantum information science devices.

• share
• favorite_border

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced up to $24 million for research into technology that captures carbon emissions directly from the air, replicating the way plants and trees absorb carbon dioxide (CO2).

• share
• favorite_border

Many chemical processes require liquids as solvents, but the liquids often vaporize and release hazardous emissions in the process. Ionic liquids offer a solution because they have low volatility but can have melting points too high for practical use. New research used molecular simulations and experiments to demonstrate how changing the structure of ionic liquids changes their melting point.

• share
• favorite_border

Research has shown that the topology of the electronic states in a Weyl semimetal can leave fingerprints on their phonon properties. This happens because of a type of electron-phonon interaction called the Kohn anomaly that impacts how electrons screen phonons through a material. This instability can lead to new electronic properties in materials.

• share
• favorite_border

The cell membrane is the wall-like outer layer consisting primarily of lipids and proteins that separates the inside of a cell from its surrounding environment. Scientists have now used X-ray and neutron scattering techniques to develop a disc-shaped artificial membrane that shows how proteins can exhibit different properties when embedded in membranes with different lipid compositions.

• share
• favorite_border

Based on input from the fusion and plasma research community, the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee has put forth a new vision and goal. Based on decades of advances in fusion research, they propose working to launch an economically-viable pilot fusion power plant by the 2040s.

• share
• favorite_border

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced plans to invest $25 million in fundamental science to lay the groundwork for technology that finds reuses for plastic waste, makes strides toward addressing the global plastic waste crisis, and reduces the climate impacts of plastic production.

• share
• favorite_border

Timothy Bertram of the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin – Madison is studying the role atmospheric chemistry plays in regulating concentrations of air pollutants, greenhouse gases, and aerosol particles.

• share
• favorite_border

New computer design methods pave the way for scientists to design and assemble bundles of peptides with specific size, shape, and display characteristics. Scientists can then link these customizable building blocks, called bundlemers, to produce a huge array of polymers.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists recently investigated the factors that control fluorescent light signals from metal organic frameworks (MOFs). The light may turn on due to structural changes in the MOF and turn off due to reorganization of the electrons in the MOF. Understanding these factors advances researchers’ ability to design and use MOFs as chemical sensors.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have created a new type of electricity-conducting polymer containing both linear and ring elements. The new polymers have very different electronic properties than scientists would expect if the polymers simply added the contributions from each linear and ring component. The polymers open new avenues for moving energy within and between polymers.

• share
• favorite_border

Recent research on the neutron-proton (np) reaction could help us understand the age of the Earth and build less expensive nuclear power plants. The np reaction plays a role in potassium-argon dating and in the removal of neutrons from nuclear reactor cores, leading to core shutdown. In recent studies, nuclear scientists used a new neutron source to show that np reaction rates occur in ways very different from scientists’ initial expectations.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have identified three distinct shapes in stable nickel-64 that appear as energy is added to the nucleus. The nucleus in the lowest-energy state is spherical, then takes elongated (prolate) and flattened (oblate) shapes as the protons and neutrons surrounding the nucleus gain energy. This demonstrates profound changes in the way protons and neutrons can arrange themselves.

• share
• favorite_border

One of the great challenges in fusion tokamaks is how to keep the core of a plasma hot enough that fusion can occur while maintaining a temperature at the edge of the plasma low enough that it doesn’t melt the tokamak’s walls. This requires dissipating the heat and particles flowing towards the wall without reducing the performance of the core. Researchers recently developed a pathway to addressing this core-edge integration challenge.