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Exploring the gluon saturation in large nuclei is one of the major goals of the future Electron-Ion Collider. New research proposes a novel method to probe the onset of gluon saturation by measuring the nucleon energy-energy correlation in deep inelastic scattering. This result leads to a comprehensive approach to study the universal behavior of gluon saturation.

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Scientists have gained insights into the weak nuclear force from new, more sensitive studies of the beta decays of the “mirror” nuclei lithium-8 and boron-8. The weak nuclear force drives the process of nuclear beta decay. The research found that the properties of the beta decays of lithium-8 and boron-8 are in perfect agreement with the predictions of the Standard Model.

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Microbiologists do not fully understand how bacteria’s genes relate to their life strategies. Now, by analyzing large DNA sequencing datasets from around the globe, researchers discovered a new way of categorizing the dominant life strategies of soil bacteria based on their genes. This technique allowed the researchers to link different life strategies with specific climate and soil conditions.

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Scientists know of more than 3,300 isotopes. Researchers have compiled experimental nuclear data for all known nuclei, including mass, quantum numbers, half-life, decay modes, and branching intensities.

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You may have flown a flight simulator in a computer game or at a science museum. Landing without crashing is always the hardest part. But that’s nothing compared to the challenge that engineers are facing to develop a flight simulation of the very large vehicles necessary for humans to explore the surface of Mars. The Red Planet poses innumerable challenges to astronauts, not the least of which is getting there. That’s where the Department of Energy Office of Science’s user facility supercomputers come in. Researchers at DOE’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) are working with NASA engineers and scientists to simulate the process of slowing down a huge spacecraft as it moves towards Mars’ surface.

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When superconductors encounter too much current, they can become resistive. Researchers can design microscopic electronic components that use this effect to create a switch, like a transistor. The resulting nanowire superconducting switching devices (called nano-cryotrons, or nTrons) show promise for future superconducting electronics or particle detectors.

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Soil microbes use volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as a food source but can also release VOCs as gases that enter the atmosphere.

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To study quantum many-body systems, researchers use computational tools called quantum Monte Carlo simulations. In this work, researchers used a specific approach called the “floating block method” to compute atomic nuclei corresponding to two different Hamiltonians.

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Creating multiple universes to see how they run might be tempting to scientists, but it’s obviously not possible. That is, as long as you need physical universes. If you can make do with virtual ones, there are far more options.

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In early 2023, scientists published a new measurement testing the strong nuclear force. The experiment involved the way an alpha particle becomes excited. The study suggested a puzzle that could not be solved with existing theoretical methods.

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Lanthanide elements are important for clean energy and other applications. To use them, industry must separate mixed lanthanide sources into individual elements using costly, time-consuming, and waste-generating procedures. An efficient new method can be tailored to select specific lanthanides.

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On screensaver mode, smart TVs often rotate through photos of natural wonders, from waterfalls to canyons. Now imagine hundreds of those televisions, with one single image spread out among them.

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Physicists use methods called finite-volume simulations with periodic boundary conditions to model the nuclei protons and neutrons can form. This new work solves a long-standing and fundamental problem for electrically charged systems in these “periodic boxes.” It derives the mathematical equation that describes how the properties of these electrically charged systems depend on the size of the simulation volume.

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Background radioactivity from cables in equipment for ultra-precise physics experiments can impair those experiments.

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As I depart the Office of Science to return to my academic position, I would like to take a moment to reflect on the amazing things we’ve done together over the past two years.

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Microbes called anaerobic methanotrophic archaea form communities with sulfate reducing bacteria. These communities can consume methane in anaerobic environments. This research found that biological processes in these microbial communities can create silica deposits that appear to entomb the communities.

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According to the traditional model of nuclear shells, oxygen-28 is expected to be a doubly magic nucleus with 20 neutrons and 8 protons. However, an experiment performed at the Rare Isotope Beam Facility in Japan measured the direct decay of oxygen-28 into four neutrons and oxygen-24 and found that it is not a bound nucleus.

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As you gaze into the night sky, stars look like tiny, glowing pinpricks shining through the dark. But inside those stars, reactions occur that produce staggering amounts of energy. All stars – including our sun – produce energy through a powerful reaction called fusion.

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Entanglement entropy quantifies the amount of entanglement between two subsystems. In many systems, the entanglement entropies increase as the area that separates them from their environment increases.

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With a delicate hand, Anna Karion slides a large, enclosed box back into its protective shelf. She’s standing on top of a hill that overlooks the Washington D.C. area. This box, a greenhouse gas (GHG) sensor, is connected to a tube that runs up a tall, metal tower that is constantly collecting air samples. Karion, a research scientist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is working to fine-tune GHG measuring instruments installed in a telecommunications tower.

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Polyolefins are resistant to breaking down, making them hard to recycle. Scientists have now discovered a yeast, Yarrowia lipolytica, that uses hydrocarbons derived from polyolefin plastic wastes to produce substances that can be used to make biodegradable polyesters and polyurethanes.

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Like protons and neutrons, Lambda particles consist of three quarks bound together by gluons. But unlike protons and neutrons, which contain a mixture of up and down quarks, Lambdas also contain a strange quark.

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The tantalum isotope, Ta-180m, is found naturally in a long-lived excited state. However, the radioactive decay of this excited state in Ta-180m has never been observed.

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When scientists collide heavy nuclei, the constituent quarks and gluons melt into a quark-gluon plasma.

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The room buzzed with conversation, until the moderator attempted to quiet it for a second time. Slowly, discussions paused and heads turned back towards the front of the room.

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At high temperatures and densities, plasmas in fusion devices can develop gradients that can grow into instabilities, including edge localized modes (ELMs) that can damage reactor walls. In this research, scientists studied negative triangularity, a way the plasma shape can deviate from an oval. The research found this shaping was inherently free of instabilities across various plasma conditions, including operating reactor conditions.

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In cancer research, seeing is believing. Before they can diagnose or treat cancer, researchers and doctors need to have a clear understanding of what’s happening at a microscopic level. While existing technology allows us to see things the naked eye can’t, a team of researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is working to standardize a process for staining and seeing cancer in a whole new perspective – in 3D (three dimensions).

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Theoretical models can fill the gaps in experimental physics, but using a single imperfect theoretical model can be misleading. To improve the quality of predictions, researchers created a machine learning method that combines the results of several imperfect models.

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Conditions in peatlands slow microbial decomposition of organic matter into greenhouse gases. This process stores carbon in the soil. Researchers use the Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Changing Environments (SPRUCE) experiment to warm air and soil in a northern Minnesota bog to simulate the effects of climate change on the carbon cycle. The experiments showed that all organic soil components can break down more quickly in warmer conditions.

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Experimentalists and theorists have provided strong evidence for the creation of an exotic isotope, nitrogen-9, which has two neutrons and seven protons. This unbalanced ratio of protons to neutrons produces a nucleus that only survives for less than one-billionth of a nanosecond. The work also provides information on nitrogen-9’s mirror nucleus, helium-9, which has two protons to its seven neutrons.

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High in the sky over an Alaskan tundra, a small aircraft ran the same pattern over and over again. It swooped through clouds and flew down close to the ground. But there were no people experiencing the flight from inside the plane – it was an unmanned aerial system (UAS). UASs are aircraft that people can operate remotely from the ground. Building on years of testing, researchers working with the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Department of Energy Office of Science user facility are now gaining access to these helpful tools.

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Fluids moving through fractures in subsurface rock react with chemicals in the rock to alter the fractures and the rock’s permeability. The processes involved operate much more slowly in the field than in laboratory tests, making them hard to predict. This study used simulations of mineral dissolution to discover a link between the structure of fractures in rock and how that rock reacts with fluid moving through it.

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The next generation of programmable quantum devices will require processors built around superior qubits. Researchers developed a blueprint for a novel quantum information processor based on fluxonium qubits. These fluxonium qubits outperform transmons, the most widely used superconducting qubits. The researchers also made practical suggestions on how to adapt and build the cutting-edge hardware for superconducting devices.

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Neutrinos from the Sun result from a chain of nuclear fusion reactions. Scientists use theoretical calculations to extrapolate the rate of these reactions using theory and data from experiments on Earth. A new evalution protocol dramatically reduces the uncertainty in these extrapolations. This will help scientists better understand neutrinos and the interior of the Sun.

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With time scheduled to use a certain beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source-II (NSLS-II), scientists from NSLS-II and their partner institutions faced a challenge. They planned on researching a special type of region in magnetic materials that could be useful for next-generation computers. Regions in magnetic materials - called magnetic domains - determine a material's magnetic properties. The scientists wanted to study how these magnetic domains changed over time under the influence of an outside magnetic field.

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Two collaborations have pioneered a new technique, Cyclotron Radiation Emission Spectroscopy, to investigate the nature of fundamental particles and forces in the universe. The Project 8 collaboration set an upper limit on the mass of neutrinos. The He6-CRES collaboration observed the decay of radioactive isotopes of helium and neon to set the stage for investigating the weak interaction.

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Plasma is unusual here on Earth. It’s a gas that’s so hot that the ions and electrons in it aren’t bound to each other in atoms. Even though it’s one of the four fundamental states of matter, you may never think of it alongside solids, liquids, and gases.

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Microalgae in water are responsible for roughly 50% of the photosynthesis that converts carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into organic carbon. Researchers have now quantified the activity in the microbiome associated with these microalgae to investigate how the microbiome’s members process and exchange carbon and nitrogen from algal cells. They used isotopes and high-resolution imaging mass spectrometry to quantify these exchanges at the single-cell level.

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Researchers studying complex phenomena such as the Higgs boson must work with massive experimental data sets. To help, researchers have defined practical FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) principles for data and applied the principles to an open simulated tktk from CERN. FAIR will help humans and computers use large data sets, enable modern computers to process these data sets, and aid the development of artificial intelligence tools.

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The stone age didn’t end because people ran out of stones. Instead, people found better materials that met their needs. Throughout history, the discovery of new materials has led to breakthrough technological advancements. They have ranged from the discovery of bronze to create better tools and weapons to the discovery of semiconductors used in microelectronics. Historically, scientists and inventors have found new and better materials through a mix of intuition and trial-and-error. It can often take decades to find a useful, new material. The Materials Project aims to accelerate this process.